Boundary Project, Oxford University
The Boundary Project is exploring themes at the intersections of arts, biodiversity and climate change with artists, scientists and thinkers, and began in the Spring of 2022. Nikyta brought a focus on circular economy and the importance of resilient local foodsheds to this work which resulted in several projects, art shows and performances and continues into this Fall, 2022. Please read on below for media coverage of these events and current exhibitions and performances.
Nikyta is currently exploring themes of the necessity to re-weave invisible relational connections within the local food shed, just as mycelium, or the roots of fungi, do underground. She is using local wool from Lopez Island and creating “storied garments” to wear on her body as she performs a reshaped myth of Persephone as told through a modern and mycological lens.
Nikyta will be performing and exhibiting these works at the Lopez Library, Nov 19th at 6 pm (also a zoom hybrid, click here for link: http://lopezlibrary.org/storytelling/ and at the Barn College, St. John’s College at Oxford University, Nov 25, 7 pm. Art works made by Nikyta and the larger consortium of Boundary Project artists on display at the Barn Gallery, Nov 26-28, 2022.
Photos below of raw wool in progress to becoming a “storied object”.
New Work: Gates of Inanna, December 2021
In this photopoetic narrative I will be tracking the seven gates of Inanna as she descends, sheds her literal skin, is remade and travels back through the seven gates and beyond. This is a daily offering leading to the darkest day of the year, and then a rising from that darkest day back into the light of Joy and Resilience.
Two years ago, I created a workshop for women called “Inanna’s Descent”. It was made to be six weekends where after studying the goddesses who traverse the underworld and return transformed— Psyche, Persephone, Inanna— that we would create our own myth we are living as an art work to be shared. The first three weekends went beautifully, the fourth scheduled for March of 2020. Then pandemic struck, all bets were off, the workshop stopped, and Inanna was left with the rest of us for the last 2 years in the underworld.
It’s time she returns. It’s time we all return.
So this piece is about those portals of undoing, those portals that lead us to our own underworld, and it will track what are those nurturing portals of return.
I’ll also be posting this to my website, Facebook and Instagram, and will follow where it leads me beyond the seven gates and into the new year. Into the light of my new life. Thank you for taking this journey with me.
Art Show “Looking into the Horizon of our Far Older Future
Lopez Grind Coffeeshop, Lopez Island, WA, USA, October 8, 2020
Please email Nikyta for prices and size choices at nikytapalmisani@gmail.com
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