Nora Maité Nieves Puerto Rico, b. 1980

Nora Maité Nieves (b. 1980, Puerto Rico) is an interdisciplinary artist, whose works are abstracted visual motifs of architectural details. Exploring themes of identity and belonging—as well as the histories of places that we knowingly or unknowingly carry with us throughout our lives—Nieves comments on the sacredness and safety of a single place within a complicated and evolving environment.

There is an inherent and immediate physicality to Nieves’ 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 residence—with those from the urban landscape she now encounters on a daily basis.

Nora Maité 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: Deep Blue Day, Pink Bright Night, Embajada Foyer, Brooklyn, NY (2021); Full Room in the Sun Room, Fresh Window Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Paisaje Lunar, Flyweight Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019); and Tangible at Hidrante, San Juan, PR (2018). 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). Recent group exhibitions include: Surfacing at Ruiz-Healy Art, New York, NY curated by Carlos Rosales-Silva (2021); Contact Light at Survey Survey, New York, NY (2021); […]ENTREFORMAS, at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Abdiel Segarra (2021); Rubus Armeniacus (Himalayan Blackberry) at Jessica’s Apartment Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Jessica Kwok (2019); Nada Tropical, Miscelanea Gallery, Barcelona, Spain, curated by Ricardo Cabret and  Maximilian Juliá (2019); Small Objects at La Salita, New York, NY, curated by Paz Monge (2019); Repatriation at El Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR, curated by Bianca Ortiz (2019); and EDDYS Room at Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden, curated by Austin Eddy (2018).