Nina Elder is inspired by holes in the ground and piles of rocks. Her practice invigorates the mind and body towards the future, celebrates a planet that is dynamic and beyond human control, while fostering deeper connection and stewardship. As an artist and researcher, Nina engages deep time perspectives where planets, geology, and ecosystems are in constellation with social issues and personal narratives. Inspired by geologic disturbance and resilience, she interprets planetary dynamics as scores for human behavior and learning, becoming adept in the flux between life and death, creativity and mourning.

With a focus on changing cultures and ecologies, Nina advocates for collaboration, fostering relationships between institutions, artists, scientists and diverse communities. Her work takes many forms, including drawings, sculpture, performance, essays, pedagogy, and long term community-based projects. Recent solo exhibitions of Nina’s work have been organized by SITE Santa Fe, Indianapolis Contemporary, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and university museums across the US. Her work has been featured in Art in America, VICE Magazine, Hyperallergic, and on PBS. Nina’s writing has been published by Routledge Press, American Scientist, and Edge Effects Journal. Her research has been supported by the Warhol Foundation, Rauschenberg Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and Mellon Foundation.

Fugitive Darkness, painted with fresh squid ink

Project Description

While at Xenoform Labs, Nina will continue her exploration of the presence of absence in our personal, political, and planetary lives. To find herself within myriad forms of change and unrest, Nina has followed her instinct to repeatedly create abstract circular shapes. The form is an open metaphor: a black hole, a cyst, a seed, a mine, an asteroid, a time capsule, a vessel, and a passage into the future. In San Francisco, she will evolve this into wearable forms, working towards a series of performances that engage breath, inflation, levitation, and exhaustion.

Monstrance, a reliquary for what is concrete