Nicole Salimbene in her studio. Photo by the artist.
Each month, the Luce Foundation Center partners with neighboring Flashpoint Gallery to bring local artists to speak about their own work and the inspiration they take from SAAM's collection. We'll kick off our fall Luce Artist Talk Series on Sunday, September 25, with Nicole Salimbene, a multimedia artist whose work explores themes of mindfulness and conflict between one's internal self and the physical world. She will discuss how she uses form to encourage contemplation and provoke dialogue.
Have you stood in front of a piece of artwork, eyes swelled with tears or with a grin larger than life, because the piece evoked a deep personal connection or raw emotion inside of you? On Sunday, D.C. artist Nicole Salimbene will discuss how her interactive installations invite viewers to contemplate their own personal relationship with the piece and discuss how it impacts them. Rooted deep within her artistic practice, Salimbene's art acts as a metaphor for a human experience or represents a relationship with the physical world.
Like Nicole's installations, artwork in the Luce Center uses form, color and shape to convey the human experience. Rosalind Bengelson's painting, Abstraction, uses bright primary colors and simple shapes to represent the vibrancy of life while Kenneth Campbell's sculpture, Nike, uses smooth stone to give it an "awareness of its own sense of gravity, making it seem as mobile as humans are." Nicole's work, which hones in on themes of mindfulness and conflict, challenges the viewer to grasp its intended meaning from its material and form as well. Her current exhibition, titled Mending, consists of thousands of threaded sewing needles and tangled sculptural masses of yarn and stitches. She strives to create elegance and monumentality out of everyday materials traditionally used for mending or repair. Her unique material choice and sculptural forms compel the viewer to stop and meditate on the meaning of the piece and their relationship to it. She hopes the viewer draws the connection that the steady act of threading a single sewing needle represents the stitch-by-stitch process the viewer must take to create transformations in their own life and in the world.
During her talk, Nicole will draw connections between her current exhibition and Sean Scully's work, Black Moon. In addition to Scully's piece, her emphasis on meditation and reflection takes on similar themes of other works within the Luce Center such as Bruria's work, Dream Sequence, which uses lace, butterfly decals, and porcelain to allude to a meditative space.
Based in Washington, D.C., Nicole Salimbene creates art for meditative practice and hopes her work brings attention to issues within the environment, compelling the viewer to explore reasons behind their own personal life choices. On Sunday, we look forward to learning more about the connections she draws from the pieces here in Luce, as well as in her own artistic practice.
Please join us at 1:30 p.m. for Nicole's presentation and a short Q&A afterward.
