Decolonial Dream | Nicolei Gupit
Exhibition & Events
Nicolei Gupit
May 4 - June 30, 2022
Reception: Thursday, May 12, 2022 from 5 - 7 PM
This exhibition is generously sponsored by Becky Ten Brink.
Nicolei is the recipient of the Elizabeth Charles Award.
Elizabeth Charles believed in the arts as a vehicle for self-expression and as a means to develop a deeper understanding of our humanity. As a student, Elizabeth actively championed human equity and diversity. In 2020, the Lansing Art Gallery & Education Center and Elizabeth's father, Norm Charles, established the fund in her honor. Funding is provided by Norm Charles, Phyllis Mellon, as well as additional funders who seek to continue her championship by supporting Michigan artists and amplifying their voices through monetary awards and promotions. Preference will be given to artists with a vision for or emphasis on enhancing awareness and equity across race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or ethnicity.
Artist Bio
Born in 1990, Nicolei Buendia Gupit grew up in a predominately low-income, nonwhite neighborhood in Los Angeles where she and her family relied on child welfare, food stamps, and public transportation to get by. Through the bus window, she witnessed the severe racial and socioeconomic gaps between the people of L.A. These observations as a young bus rider led her to make drawings and paintings that feature the diverse bus-riding population as a visual means to communicate the city’s vast disparities. Over the years, her practice has expanded to encompass installation, video, and sculpture to incorporate physical objects and materials—from metal, wood, and paper to textiles, palm fronds, and banana leaves—that are symbolically and conceptually resonant with concepts of cultural hybridity and social belonging. By juxtaposing, combining, and manipulating imagery and techniques, she develops an interdisciplinary practice that bridges the manufactured and the handcrafted, fictions and realities, and high and low technologies.
Gupit completed a BA in studio art at Williams College where she was the recipient of the prestigious Prize for Distinction in Art. After completing her degree, she taught English abroad in Micronesia, South Korea, and Taiwan from 2014 to 2019. Her recent projects have been exhibited at The Painting Center in New York City, NY; the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, MN; and the We Are South Music & Arts Festival in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She lives and works in East Lansing, MI where she is currently pursuing her MFA in studio art at Michigan State University.
Artist Statement
Nicolei states:
"As a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Los Angeles, I make paintings, sculptures, videos, and mixed-media installations that draw on two distinct but intimately tied cultures: Filipinx and American cultures. For example, I use plant matter found in the Philippines such as palm fronds, banana leaves, bamboo, cogon grass, gampi, abaca, and rice as unconventional materials to create my art. I also incorporate lottery scratchers in my work to speak on the pursuit of the American dream and financial hardship in the US. By layering different elements from American and Filipinx cultures together, my body of work expresses the cultural hybridity that reflects my identity and my experience as a second-generation immigrant. As a whole, I take inspiration from my Filipinx family heritage and upbringing in Los Angeles to speak on the challenges that many members of immigrant and diasporic communities face.