www.kikanicolela.com
b. 1976, Brazil
Lives and works in Brussels and São Paulo

Kika Nicolela is a Brazilian artist, filmmaker and independent curator. Her works include single-channel videos, video-installations, performances, experimental documentaries and photography. Graduated in Film and Video by the University of Sao Paulo, Kika Nicolela has also completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK). The artist was nominated for the international award EXTRACT – Young Art Prize in 2014, and she was the recipient of several prominent Brazilian grants and awards. She has participated of over 100 solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including the Kunst Film Biennale (Germany), Bienal of the Moving Image (Argentina), Bienal do Mercosul (Brazil), Ventosul Bienal de Curitiba (Brazil) and Bienal de Video y Artes Mediales (Chile). Some of the main spaces that presented her works are: MASP – São Paulo Museum of Art, MIS – Museum of Image and Sound, Museum of the City of São Paulo, Paço das Artes, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Vermelho Gallery, Sesc Pompéia, Sesc Pinheiros and Sesc Vila Mariana, in São Paulo; Museum of Modern Art, Salvador; Gustavo Capanema Palace, Rio de Janeiro; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; TPW Gallery, Toronto; GL Strand, Copenhagen; Galeria des Angels, Barcelona; LOOP Gallery, Seoul; and Parc de La Vilette, Paris. Her videos have been screened and awarded in festivals of more than 30 countries, such as: Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, Bilbao International Film Festival, Japan Media Arts Festival, Videoformes New Media & Video Art Festival and Videobrasil. As a curator, Kika Nicolela has developed programs for several art institutions and festivals, such as the National Gallery (Iceland), Screen Festival (Spain), Festival Miden (Greece), Alucine Toronto Latino Media Festival (Canada), Wikitopia (Hong Kong) and Directors Lounge (Germany). Since 2008, Kika Nicolela also curates and coordinates the Exquisite Corpse Video Project, an ongoing collaborative series of videos that involves more than 90 artists from 25 countries. She was an artist-in-residence at the Gyeonggi Creation Center (South Korea), Objectifs (Singapore), Route Fabrik (Switzerland), Sumu AIR (Finland), Rondo Studio (Austria), and LIFT (Canada), among others. Her works are placed in private and public collections in Brazil and Europe, such as Museum of Modern Art of Salvador, Itaú Cultural Institute, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Casoria Contemporary Art Museum and Biobliothèque Nationale de France.

Kika Nicolela is interested in the encounter with the other, mediated by the camera – mostly, the video camera. The camera is a tool for her, not of recording, documenting or enacting, but of triggering a situation, relationships and behaviors. The camera is essential to help her investigate representation and self-representation, identity and alterity, portrait and self-portrait, and create a space of fluctuation between these binaries. This ambivalence in the moving image is what she is searching for: works that produce a heightened experience of the very ambiguity of our own subjectivity and of the real.

Artist Code: 960