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Nancy Brooks Brody (September 12, 1962 - December 8, 2023 ) was an artist known for drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation, and was a founding member of the queer feminist activist collective fierce pussy.

Early life and Career
Brody was born and raised in Manhattan's Upper West Side, and spent summers away at camp from childhood through their teen years. They attended High School of Music and Art, then known as Music and Art, graduating in 1980. Beginning in high school, Brody frequented night clubs including the Mudd Club and Danceteria; their first art exhibit was at the Pyramid Club. After high school, Brody studied for two years at the School of Visual Art.

Brody worked in the darkroom at Abrams Publishing Company, and collaborated with artist David Svitzer making jewelry, which they sold to the Patricia Field's boutique and Henri Bendel department store. They were a studio assistant for Jennifer Bartlett, and former high school classmate Jean Michel Basqiat. Brody was hired as a fire fighter, working at Mount St. Helens for three years from 1993-1996.

They studied martial arts, including Qigong, Tai Chi, and Bagua beginning in 1987.

Activism
After participating in AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) protests, Brody began attending planning meetings. They were part of the campaign to protest the CDC (1989), Target City Hall (1989) and Day of Desperation (1991), the Queens-Midtown-Tunnel Action (1995) and other protests, sometimes getting arrested for acts of civil disobedience.

In 1991, Brody was a founding member of the lesbian feminist art activist collective fierce pussy, along with Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka. The group formed during an open call on the floor of ACT UP. Early actions involved designing and wheat pasting posters that reclaimed slurs for lesbians.

Merce Drawings
"Brody’s wonderful “Merce Drawings” — as in Merce Cunningham — are reprinted photos in which she’s made the dancer a kind of levitating tightrope walker by drawing a line around his body, from the soles of his feet to the tips of his fingers to the top of his head."

"Frequently, the lines Brody inscribes around the figures in the photos seem to bound their actions, as if they were dancing with black elastic bands circumventing them."

Painting
Brody's Glory Hole series are "black-and-white grids radiant with half-hidden color." They were included in Trigger: Gender As a Tool and a Weapon at the New Museum, gaining critical attention for their "netlike organic grayscale grids with flashes of color so subtle they appear more illusory than real—are exquisite and mesmerizing".

Sculpture & Installation
Brody's Color Forms are made from lead, sometimes brightly enameled, embedded into the gallery wall." . Their work "18 feet 8 inch Line" (2019) a lead piece of the eponymous length embedded into two intersecting walls, also addresses perception. The "simplicity of this gesture is deceiving, as the orientation of the line shifts the perceptive weight and visual understanding of an otherwise “empty” room."

Curatorial Projects
Brody curated Movement Schmoovement, La MaMa la Galleria New York, NY in 2010 with artist Linda Matalon. They curated DAVID NELSON at NYU's 80WSE Gallery in 2015 with Jonathan Berger, 2015. In 2016, they co-curated TONY FEHER | It Didn’t Turn Out the Way I Expected, Sikkema Jenkins & Co, with Andrea Blum, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka.

Solo exhibitions

 * Ode, Klaus Von Nichtsagend, 2024
 * Nancy Brooks Brody, Klaus Von Nichtsagend, 2019
 * Nancy Brooks Brody: Book Marks, Fortnight Institute, New York City, 2018
 * Decoy of New Showers, Nancy Brooks Brody + David Nelson invited by Jo-ey Tang, Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris France, 2015
 * SUITES IN SPACE: Merce Drawings and Color Forms, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Alenha Katsof, 2014
 * 2007-2009, Virgil de Voldere Gallery, New York, NY, 2009
 * 2004-2007, Virgil de Voldere Gallery, New York, NY, 2007
 * Slingshot Project Gallery, New York, NY, 2004
 * Khiva Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 1986
 * New Math Gallery, New York, NY, 1985
 * New Math Gallery, New York, NY, 1984

Group exhibitions

 * Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York, NY, Curated by Johanna Burton and Sara O’Keeffe, 2017
 * Nancy Brooks Brody, Paula Hayes, Zoe Leonard, Jack Pierson, Andrea Rosen Gallery, 1992
 * Club 57, curated by Keith Haring, New York, NY, 1980

Group exhibitions with fierce pussy

 * Exposé·es Chapter Seven: arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard /Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy: amplified,  Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, Curated with Jo-ey Tang and Francois Piron, 2023
 * arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified, ICA, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia organized by Anthony Elms and Jo-ey Tang, 2019
 * arms ache avid aeon: Nancy Brooks Brody / Joy Episalla / Zoe Leonard / Carrie Yamaoka: fierce pussy amplified, Beeler Gallery, Columbus, OH, Curated by Jo-ey Tang, 2018

Collections

 * Centre Pompidou, Dust: The Plates of the Present, Paris, France


 * The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (MOCA)


 * Victoria and Albert Museum as part of fierce pussy
 * FRAC Haute-Normandie, France
 * Trafic FRAC Haute-Normandie, FRAC Rouen, France
 * Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, FNAC Paris, France

Publications

 * Ode. exhibit catalog with essay “Come Flying” by Jill H. Casid. Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, 2024.
 * "Exposé - Es D’après "Ce que le sida m'a fait" d'Elisabeth Lebovici, Published by the Palais de Tokyo and Fonds Mercator ISBN 9462303398
 * Burton, Johanna and Natalie Bell, editors. Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon. New York, NY: New Museum, 2017. ISBN 9780915557165
 * "Dust: The plates of the present", February 2013 – July 2015 Published by Blonde Art Books and Secretary Press ISBN 0988321483
 * Lord, Catherine & Richard Meyer. Art & Queer Culture. London: Phaidon Press, 2013. ISBN 9780714849355
 * "Art & Activism: Kunst und politischer Aktivismus in New York", Sammlungen Hieber / Theising, 2014
 * "Herstory Inventory", Ulrike Muller, Karen Kelly, and Barbara Schroder, editors, 2014
 * The Land Line Issue I, 2012
 * "Cruising The Archive:  Queer Art and Culture in Los Angeles, 1945-1980", 2011
 * "Traits Pour Traits," FRAC Haute-Normandie, 2009
 * "Nancy Brooks Brody, " by Anne Blume, 2009
 * "Sessions, " Katerina Llane, editor, 2009
 * "Do you wish to direct me?" LTTR #4, Printed Matter, inc, 2005
 * "Une Collection pour Une Région 1982-2002," Haute-Normandie FRAC, France, 2002
 * "Darryl," collected poems, 1998
 * Fatstick magazine, James Wilk, editor, 1998
 * "Lizzie Higgins," Jo's Girls, (anthology), Beacon press, 1997
 * "Reviewing The Usual," Fort Edward Art Center, 1997
 * "outRAGEous desire," Rutgers University, 1991