April 1 -April 11 2021
Artist Bio
Nicole Neidhardt is Diné (Navajo) of Kiiyaa'áanii Clan on her mother’s side, a blend of European ancestry on her father’s side and is from Santa Fe, NM. She has a BFA from the University of Victoria and is currently working on her MFA at OCAD University in Toronto, ON. Nicole’s Diné identity is the heart of her practice which encompasses mirror mylar stenciling, installation, illustration, painting, and muraling. Her research interests center around Indigenous Futurisms, Diné storytelling, Diné Aesthetics, Land-based practices, and Time Travel.
Alongside her artistic practice, she is the co-founder of the Innovative Young Indigenous Leaders Symposium, the Groundswell Climate Collective, and has recently released a children’s book she illustrated written by Monique Gray Smith titled, When We Are Kind.
Artist Statement
The wor(l)ds contained in this MFA thesis exhibition, Stories Held in a Time Traveller’s Hogan, offer glimmers into Diné Time, Diné Aesthetics, Indigenous Futurisms, and Sa’ąh Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhǫ́ǫ́n. The Diné Knowledges held in this exhibition reach across time and space to Diné Ancestors, to Diné Time Travellers, to the Land, and to family. These connections are held within constellations of temporality and relationality that are created by stories. Throughout this re-search journey, I began to wonder, how do we activate the Land as Time Machine? What happens when portals, or spaces of fluid time energy, on the Land start making their own stories? Diné Time Travellers open up a space for these questions. They are masterful weavers of time, story, and Diné aesthetics. Their weavings illuminate pathways for dreaming expansively outside of colonial realities. For this thesis project, the Diné Time Travellers wanted to visit the Diné Sacred Mountains to spend time with their stories that reside in the Land there. This exhibition is alive with those stories.