Nakita Shelley

Artist Statement

I approach materiality and visibility through the experience of the body, using abstraction as an intuitive language that bridges sensory realities.
As a queer interdisciplinary artist shaped by the contrasts of a conservative religious upbringing in Utah, my work explores intersections of object, land, and body through a lens of intersectional feminism. Often utilizing my own body as a catalyst, my practice spans installation, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and performance. By transforming materials into bodily extensions—dough into flesh, mapped lines into hair, soil into pigment—I challenge societal constructs and examine fluid relationships between the body and its material surroundings.
Collaboration and community are key to my work, tying the personal to the collective. Participatory performances, donated hair, recorded conversations, and shared storytelling function as tools to foster critical discourse. By creating spaces where material experiences intersect with collective themes of feminism, ritual, and the mundane, I connect material and body to amplified, shared voices. I explore how these interactions communicate cultural, historical, and contemporary narratives, drawing connections between individual and communal identities.
I recontextualize theories and objects through organic and everyday materials, transforming them into tools for interrogating cultural ties and challenging conventional narratives. Humor and familiarity offer accessibility, while improvisation and abstraction create space for complexity—inviting layered expressions of power, autonomy, and identity. These gestures remap the body as a site of reflection, where contradictions breathe and evolve.
Through the interplay of object, land, and body, I push the boundaries of their presence, absence, and transformative capacities. My work uncovers absurdities embedded in everyday structures, encouraging a deeper examination of the cultural scaffolding that shapes our lives.