Nina Tichava – How does the sea remember me every time (Lantern Series)

$2,500

SKU: 23556

Artwork Description

How does the sea remember me every time (Lantern Series)

Dimensions: 20 x 30″
Year: 2017
Media: painting and collage on panel

In How does the sea remember me every time (Lantern Series), Tichava uses layered patterning and materials to evoke visual familiarity; the work’s dominant circular forms are reminiscent of sun spots captured in natural photography or forms created by the breaking surf. Tichava juxtaposes lights and darks, purer and more muted colors to reference her relationship with mediums such as weaving and photography as well as her personal ties to New Mexican landscape—which is often punctuated by the deep blues and earth tones located within the work.

Nina Tichava is a young New Mexico artist who was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship for her innovative art practice. Tichava attended art school at the prestigious California College of Art, and her works are subtley inspired by her upbringing in New Mexico in a family of weavers. Tichava’s paintings incorporate movement and levity, with an exciting, dynamic palette.

Nina Tichava draws from her familial and personal ties to New Mexico to inform a body of work that can be described as both organic and geometric. Building upon her parents’ artistic practices, including photography and weaving, Tichava uses visual language to reference Native American culture and overcome the barriers imposed by her non-native heritage. While her mixed media works often use repetitive patterning, Tichava describes her work as abstract and informed by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Agnes Martin, and Frank Stella. Her work relies on processes of layering, building intricate patterning and layers of pigment to generate finished products that are at once auto-biographical and visually complex; by superimposing colors and shapes, Tichava suggests that the various layers reference layers of personal experience. Tichava uses materials such as paper, paint, and beads to render three-dimensional weaving onto otherwise two-dimensional canvases, allowing her to work as weaver, painter, and sculptor and produce works that cannot be defined by a single genre.

By Keira Seidenberg, Art History/Gender Studies student, McGill University