Nikki Brooks

Animation / Video / Film, Drawing, Multidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary Art, Painting, Public Art, Sculpture / Installation, Visual / Media

Nikki’s artwork focuses on social activism and art. She creates artworks that provoke the audience to interact with the objects, images, sculptures, and writings presented in the space. Artists like Fred Wilson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Maya Lin, and Adrian Piper have inspired and influenced the way Nikki curates her space to become this communal space for all viewers. She describes her created spaces: as “walking into one of my collages.”

About the Artist

Nikki Brooks was born in 1975 in Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in Spotsylvania County, VA. She is a multi-disciplinary artist that works specifically in installations and assemblage that are infused with digital and audio elements, paintings, sculpted text, and collage spaces. These works encourage the viewer to connect in forms of writing, storytelling, and shared dialogue through workshops that focus on diversity, inclusion, truth- telling and lament.

Nikki Brooks website View Website

Artist's Statement

Nikki Brooks creates installations she describes as “collage in 3-D, a multitude of voices.” Guided by the words of strong women in her life and informed by ancestral and historical lenses, her work serves as truth-telling rooted in her lived experiences as a Black woman, a woman, and a cis-gendered gay woman. Brooks’ practice spans painting, digital media, installation, and sculptural objects, at times incorporating food to explore comfort, utility, and community. Each piece layers personal and collective histories, unfolding as vessels of memory and resilience. Rather than offering didactic instruction, her work invites viewers into spaces where meaning emerges through interaction. The challenge resides within the materials themselves, the presence of Blackness, and the ways audiences must navigate her artistic environments. In this way, Brooks’ art embodies teaching through experience—provoking reflection, honoring heritage, and engaging viewers in dialogue they may not otherwise encounter.

Featured Work

Photos

Guardians of Legacy, Honor, and Community 2022 16.3ft.x 30 ft, (2022) Severn, MD
I was selected to be the muralist for the new Intergenerational Center in Severn, Maryland. This mural was a collaborative project between the community of Severn and Arundel County. It was created to honor the guardians of the Severn Community.

Pride of Annapolis Towne Center, 2023, 117ft x 189ft. Annapolis, MD

I was commissioned by Annapolis Towne Center to paint a mural celebrating PRIDE month. This mural represents family, equality, and love of the LGBTQIA+ Community and to also honor legendary members of the community with two quotes from Bayard Rustin and Barbara Gittings

Videos

Mourning Discourse

See more information about Mourning Discourse

Mourning Discourse

Defines the everyday blackness in America since the enslaved landed upon these shores. Although the media has been drawing attention to the senseless murders of unarmed black men and boys somewhere in this narrative the dehumanizing and patriarchal acts enforced upon black women can become seated in the back of our minds as a moment.
Breonna's murderers still haven't been held accountable. The murders of countless other black women killed by no knock warrants, or police shootings unresolved.
Neither have the countless rapes and stereotypical pressures placed upon our bodies forced us to create an added layer to our (black women) skin giving us no permission to be anything less than strong.
In this mourning it is my hope that through performative discourse layers of historical suppression are peeled back and the audience analyzes the silent gaze that watches the black female body negotiate such structural violence.

Mourning Discourse is a collaboration of performance, sound, and installation art. The performance/dance is choreographed by Kay Harris (a former Alvin Ailey dancer) and her daughter Nya Harris (Kennedy Center dancer). Both sound and installation are created by artist Nikki Brooks.

Medium: video

Year: 2021

Booking

Booking Price: $2,001-$5,000

nikkibrooksart@gmail.com

Chanel Compton - Executive Director Banneker-Douglass Museum: chanel.compton@maryland.gov
Catherine Brady- Director of Marketing ; CBrady@trademarkproperty.com
Erin Karperwicz- Chief Executive Officer; EKarpewicz@acdsinc.org
Ana Harvey- Dupont Underground ; aharvey@dupontunderground.org