User:Nini2255/sandbox

= Nekisha Durrett =

Nekisha Durrett (born 1976) is an American contemporary artist who employs the visual language of mass media and advertising to bring forward historical connotations that objects and places embody, but are not often celebrated. Her expansive practice includes public art, social practice, installation, murals, painting, sculpture and design. She is invested in foregrounding issues of Black life while summoning the poetic from beneath the familiar and the literal to create a space where fantasy, imagination, and history converge. Durrett lives with her wife in Washington, DC

Early life
Nekisha Durrett was born in 1976 and grew up in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. As a child, she remembers wishing “to have seen more representations of people who were a bit more like me”. Durrett cites the late artist Tim Rollins as a major inspiration to her work today, after getting to work with him in the 1990s while in high school at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC.

Education
Durrett graduated from the Cooper Union in New York City with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998. She has since earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2000 from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design.

Notable Installations
Nekisha’s installations and public art are not limited to the Washington Metropolitan Area, and include;

We See You (Messages for the City) (2020) (Times Square, New York City)
At the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Durrett contributed to Messages for the City, a Times Square Artspublic art installation. The piece was displayed on LED screens featuring digital art created by Durrett.

I See Myself in You (2019)
A permanent installation in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Florida at the Audrey Edmonson Transit Village. The large scale installation was unveiled at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida in 2019. Made in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas, Durrett used painted aluminum, polished stainless steel, and neon to create the mural.

I Love You Miss Ceile (2015)
I Love You Miss Ceile is a piece inspired by The Color Purple that was on display at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.. The 48’ by 30’ digital drawing foreshadows a quote from Durrett during an interview with The Washington Post in 2020 where she states her inspiration for her artwork;

“Sometimes when I’m making my work, I think of an 8-year-old version of myself who would have liked to have seen more representations of people who were a bit more like me, … I didn’t see representations of women, or especially black women, or especially black queer women.”