NICKI GREEN

Nicki Green is a transdisciplinary artist working primarily in clay. Her sculptures, ritual objects and various flat works explore topics of history preservation, conceptual ornamentation and aesthetics of otherness. Often constructing heavily ornamented painted glaze surfaces and experimental, organic building techniques, Green creates ceramic objects that honor tradition, invite ritual,  and seem to offer a container for the sacred. Her work draws heavily on her Jewish faith and often alludes to the mikveh—the purifying Jewish ritual bath that would be taken on the sabbath, or to mark life events like childbirth or menstruation. Green’s work engages water for its spiritual and cleansing properties. Her basins are containers or vessels for water and the rituals that we carry out within and with water. Her works on view in the exhibition Assembly (2023), Water Offering (2023) and Incantation Crock (2017) all depict some variation on ritual washing, water bearers, dovaning, or hands outstretched in prayer. These are works that harness the connection between supplication, spirit, and water.  Green has drawn inspiration from a book titled “The Poisonous Mushroom,” a piece of Nazi-era propaganda about toxic “Jewish” mushrooms lurking in the forest among harmless, edible mushrooms. The book’s cover is an antisemitic caricature of a bearded face beneath a mushroom cap. Her ceramics draw upon this history by interrupting the glazed porcelain with fungus-like ‘mushroom’ clay formations. The smallest vessel includes text along its interior which says in Hebrew,  נברך את המעין, אלוהנו רוח העולם, שנותנת חיים, שמביא מות, ותוססת שינוי or “Let us bless the well, majestic spirit of the universe, who gives life, brings death, and ferments change.”