Candidacy Show for the IMDA MFA @ UMBC

A multidisciplinary installation created this past summer on a research trip with Rose Pan African Education.  Featuring two video works, one digital textile printing and a series of postcards, I use still and moving images to comment on tourism and image making specifically in the West African country of Senegal. Read the artist statement here. 

April 27–September 21, 2019

Collaborative Video Installation w/ Emani Castillo.

Stevenson University Gallery, Stevenson MD

Curated by Aden Weisel

“An Unconditional Giving” started out as work about transition and turned into a contemporary offering to the Umbanda deity Pomba Gira. Paying homage to the documentary work of Zora Neale Hurston in creating this work I walk the fine line of observing a ritual and opening myself to be mounted as Emani is in the video. We want to give the viewer the same option. In acknowledging Pomba Gira as the patron saint of marginalized people more specifically black trans sex workers we  leave items that are indicative of that experience, like dollar store lip gloss, false eyelashes, press on nails and hair weave. We encourage viewers to interact with the altar while watching the video.

April 13 - May 26, 2018

Solo Exhibit
 
Waller Gallery, Baltimore MD
 
Curated by Joy Davis.

Drapetomania was once a medical diagnosis used to explain why enslaved Africans ran away from the plantation. This was a racist and fabricated diagnosis of the human imperative to flee servitude. In her first solo exhibition, Nia Hampton shows the results of her own bout of “drapetomania” after graduating college and moving to Brazil. She captured the following on her journey through South America: environmental racism, African spiritual practices, femicide, black Brazilian feminism, haircut culture, and Love.