• A’Driane Nieves

    Notes From The Healing Circle

    ONLINE EXHIBITION

     

    Drawing on her personal experience with disability and mental health, A’Driane Nieves’ interdisciplinary practice focuses on the epigenetic, psychological, and social-emotional impacts of trauma—inherited, historical, personal—exposing how it shapes, alters, and redefines identity over the course of our lives. Through abstract forms and composition, she gives visible shape to the internal biological and emotional processes of adaptation, recovery, healing, and transformation. She believes that creating and viewing visual art that addresses difficult topics can serve as a catalyst for personal growth & social change.

     

    Galerie Marguo is pleased to present an online exhibition of Nieves' recent paintings and works on paper highlighting the healing process of her artistic practice, while her works are included in the newly opened The Drawing Centre Show exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon.  We will present Nieves' first solo exhibition with the gallery and in France in the spring of 2023.

     

    Artist: A‘Driane Nieves

  • Paintings

  • The larger paintings are reactions to what I’m discovering about myself as a person, parent, and artist as I continue to cycle through the fluid, dynamic, interconnected set of macro and micro processes of healing. They are statements of acknowledgement and declarations of affirmation synthesized from what was initially gathered and processed on paper. With larger paintings, I am able to combine dance movement with color, line, and form to physically release what I was forced to suppress as a means of survival during my childhood and adolescent stages of growth and development.

     

    Drawing on inspiration from Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters, utilizing more space to paint also enables me to create a much wider healing circle that I can invite the memories and spirits of the women in my maternal lineage into; inside the circle I lock hands with the mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and cousins I was born from. We laugh, we cry, we shake and dance, we wail and trouble the waters of our lineage, allowing each movement and utterance to release generations of suppressed emotion. In the circle there is no demand to endure, only the invitation to express what we’ve been forced to withhold. Each painting here is a container of our shared release and revelation of what’s being re-written in our cellular memory now that freedom is ours to embody.

     

    — A'Driane Nieves

  • a'driane nieves, An atypical black hole in a typical universe, 2022

    a'driane nieves

    An atypical black hole in a typical universe, 2022
    Acrylic, house paint on Belgian linen
    Diptych, each 182.9 x 152.4 x 3.8 cm (72 x 60 x 1 1/2 in)
  • An atypical black hole in a typical universe, 2022 (detail)
  • a'driane nieves, Notes From the Healing Circle (I), 2022

    a'driane nieves

    Notes From the Healing Circle (I), 2022
    Acrylic, house paint on Belgian linen
    203,2 x 162,6 x 3.8 cm
    80 x 64 x 1 1/2 in
  • Notes From the Healing Circle (I), 2022 (detail)
  • a'driane nieves, My life has been a study in self revolution, 2022

    a'driane nieves

    My life has been a study in self revolution, 2022
    Acrylic, house paint, graphite, sanguine dry lead on Belgian linen
    177.8 x 127 x 3.8 cm
    70 x 50 x 1 1/2 in
  • My life has been a study in self revolution, 2022 (detail)
  • WORKS ON PAPER

  • In my practice, I use paper to create studies and reflective meditations. Just as Julia Cameron describes morning pages as a tool for cultivating creativity and personal transformation, utilizing paper in my practice is an exercise in visual stream-of-consciousness journaling. I am able to capture thoughts, emotions, questions, random ideas, internal monologues, research, and all of the other noise playing on an endless loop in my head. Sorting it out on paper through experimentation with mark making, drawing materials, composition and color enables me to approach making larger work with more clarity, a cleared channel to my subconscious and less resistance to what intuitively surfaces. 

     

    I use paper as permission to get out of my own way. Whether torn from my sketchbooks or pulled down from my studio walls, this latest series of works on paper are a compilation of notes and meditations on lineage and ancestry, epigenetic and genetic expression, and the process of letting go of past pains in order to transmute sufferings into more expansive healing in the present moment.

     

    — A'Driane Nieves

    • a'driane nieves Mutable (Shapeshifting), 2022 Acrylic on paper 76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in) 86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      Mutable (Shapeshifting), 2022
      Acrylic on paper
      76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in)
      86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
    • a'driane nieves Resurrection: Rewired, 2022 Oil stick on paper 76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in) 86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      Resurrection: Rewired, 2022
      Oil stick on paper
      76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in)
      86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
  • Mutable (Shapeshifting), 2022 (detail)
    • a'driane nieves I Brought You with Me, 2022 Acrylic, sanguine dry lead on paper 76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in) 86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      I Brought You with Me, 2022
      Acrylic, sanguine dry lead on paper
      76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in)
      86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
    • a'driane nieves I Made It To The Other Side, 2022 Acrylic, sanguine dry lead on paper 76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in) 86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      I Made It To The Other Side, 2022
      Acrylic, sanguine dry lead on paper
      76.2 x 55.9 cm (30 x 22 in)
      86 x 66 x 3 cm (framed)
    • a'driane nieves Bloodlines: Madonna and Child, Mother and Me, 2022 Acrylic, oil stick, and graphite on paper 41.9 x 29.2 cm (16 1/2 x 11 1/2 in) 51 x 38 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      Bloodlines: Madonna and Child, Mother and Me, 2022
      Acrylic, oil stick, and graphite on paper
      41.9 x 29.2 cm (16 1/2 x 11 1/2 in)
      51 x 38 x 3 cm (framed)
    • a'driane nieves DNA (Expressions), 2021 Acrylic, oil stick, graphite on paper 67.3 x 48.3 cm (26 1/2 x 19 in) 76 x 57 x 3 cm (framed)
      a'driane nieves
      DNA (Expressions), 2021
      Acrylic, oil stick, graphite on paper
      67.3 x 48.3 cm (26 1/2 x 19 in)
      76 x 57 x 3 cm (framed)
  • I Brought You with Me, 2022 (detail)
  • ABOUT THE ARTIST

    Portrait of A'Driane Nieves

    ABOUT THE ARTIST

     

    A’Driane Nieves was born in 1982 in San Antonio, Texas. She currently lives and works in the Greater Philadelphia Area. A veteran of the United States Air Force (2002-2006), Nieves holds an Associate of Arts degree from Camden County College (2011). She is the founder and executive director of Tessera Arts Collective. Recent select group exhibitions include: ‘JVN x WCC On the Wall’, West Chelsea Contemporary (2021, Austin, TX); ‘Three Abstract Artists’, Susan Eley Fine Art (2021, New York); ‘AMERICANA Part II’, Susan Eley Fine Art (2020, New York); ‘From Chaos to Order, Making Our Way in the New World of COVID-19’, The Delaware Contemporary (2020, Wilmington, Delaware); and ‘SPECTRA’, UICA (2019, Grand Rapids, Michigan). Nieves has produced public murals for the Philadelphia Flower Show and in Philadelphia’s Fashion District. Her work is on view at public institutions and in private collections in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

     

    Learn more →

  •  

    Get in touch