This episode features Nikita Gale in conversation about the artist's work RUINER XIX (2022). Using various technologies often associated with construction or stagecraft, Gale interrogates the structures of labor, attention, and restriction. Born into a military family, Gale was raised between Anchorage, Alaska, and Atlanta, Georgia.
The artist’s mother’s instruments, father’s foam-board architectural models, and uncle’s drawings on cardboard, which he often gifted to Gale and other young relatives, are among Gale’s earliest memories of the arts. Gale’s parents’ careers within public space and performance directly reflect the artist’s own conceptual ideas and material choices. The artist’s installations feature aluminum trusses, stage lighting, instruments, and other objects commonly found at concerts. Gale explores the political nature of these objects, highlighting metal barricades, microphone stands, and concrete as having a shared history of performance and protest. The artist records the gestures of performance without including the performer in the final works, focusing instead on the mechanisms and structures that comprise the performance itself.
https://www.studiomuseum.org/artists/nikita-gale
https://www.studiomuseum.org/artworks/ruiner-xix
What is New Additions by the Studio Museum in Harlem?
Introducing the Studio Museum in Harlem’s first podcast: New Additions. This series features intimate conversations with artists whose work has been recently added to the Studio Museum’s permanent collection. Hosted by Studio Museum Senior Curatorial Assistant Habiba Hopson, New Additions brings in artists at a pivotal moment in their career to discuss their path to artmaking, their process in the studio, their dreams and inspirations, and how they start each day. Each episode reveals how the artist's work and practice shapes their world and in doing so, shapes ours.
Listen in as they dive into a diverse array of subject matter confronting their lives as artists.