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Artist Nora Maité Nieves sits in front of her artwork. Her head is propped up on her hand and she grins at the camera.

Nora Maité Nieves

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Nora Maité Nieves is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the expanded dialogue of painting. Her works are abstracted visual motifs of architectural details exploring themes of identity and belonging. There is an inherent and immediate physicality to Nieves’s work, evidenced by the richly textured and tactile surfaces and edges of her brightly colored canvases, which often include a variety of media, including acrylic, flashe, and modeling paste. Drawing inspiration from architecture encountered both in Puerto Rico and New York City, where the artist resides, Nieves acts as a connector between worlds, combining fragments of decorative elements from her Caribbean roots—a ubiquitous modernist concrete block design, tile floor patterning from a past residences—with those from the urban landscape she now encounters on a daily basis.

Nieves (b. 1980 San Juan, Puerto Rico) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.  She received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010, and her BFA  from La Escuela de Artes Plásticas, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2004. Recent solo exhibitions include: Temples of the Sea, Jason Haam, Seoul, Korea (2022); Deep Blue Day, Pink Bright Night, Embajada Foyer, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Full Room in the Sun Room, Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019). Recent Two Person exhibitions: Cuerpo, Espacio y Todo lo que Rodea, Nora Maité Nieves and Yoan Sorin, Embajada, San Juan, PR (2021); Electric Hue, Proxyco Gallery, NewYork, NY (2021). 

Featured Artwork

Painting of abstracted tile-patterns symmetrically painted onto canvas. The image contains three four-pointed stars arranged diagonally from the top left to the bottom right. At the top right and the bottom left, there is a textured square tile painted using pumice modeling paste. Two tentacle-shaped forms cross the painting. The top left and middle of the painting is populated with a deep blue wave pattern. The bottom right is a black and white grid.
Nora Maité Nieves. Deep Blue Sea, 2022. Acrylic, resin, gold-leaf, pigments, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, cold wax, and Flashe on canvas, 48.5 x 58.5 x 3 inches. Photo documentation by Daniel Terna.
Green foliage peaking over colorful breeze blocks.
Nora Maité Nieves. Looking at My Neighbor’s Yard, 2019. Acrylic, resin, pigment, gold-leaf, enamel, coarse pumice, modeling and fiber paste on canvas on wood stretch bars, 48.5 x 70.5 inches. Photo documentation by Alexa Hoyer.
Totems made from abstract colorful shapes.
Nora Maité Nieves. From left to right: Eclipse Lunar, 2021. Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, gold & silver leaf, resin, and pigments on MDF, 94.25 x 15 x 1 inches. Ciclo Lunar, 2021. Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, gold & silver leaf, and pigments on MDF, 74 x 17 x .75 inches. Blue Moon, 2021. Acrylic, Flashe, coarse pumice modeling paste, fiber paste, resin, and pigments on MDF, 94 x 17 x 1 inches. Photo documentation by Daniel Terna.

Resources

Nora Maité Nieves, Earrings for My Window, 2019, acrylic, pigment, oil, modeling and fiber paste on canvas with brass chain and quartz teardrops. Courtesy of the artist.

We Are More: Nora Maité Nieves Interviewed by Margaux Ogden. November 20, 2019

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Nora Maite Nieves. Eyes of the Sea, 2023-2024.

Eyes of the Sea, 2023-2024. Co-presented by Times Square Arts and Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL, this stop motion journey is a connector between the artist’s worlds – combining fragments of decorative elements from the Caribbean...

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