Nile Livingston is an emerging African American contemporary artist working in drawing, web-art, and installation art. She received her B.F.A. in Studio Art, at Kutztown University where she focused on sculpture and large metal fabrications. Born in 1988, Livingston grew up in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she became involved in the arts at a young age. Her mother; an educator, and father; a draftsman and a guitar player, encouraged both of their children to explore various forms of expression such as music, writing and dance.
Always experimenting with computers and building new habitats for her toys out of reassembled household objects, it was not until attending the Creative and Performing Arts High School that Livingston found satisfaction through the visual arts. She created as a way of recording her life, similar to a public diary entry. Art courses at surrounding universities introduced her to computer graphics and videography. Fascinated by the limitless mediums, she found that each combination provided evidence for narrative art works that address social, environmental, and technological changes.
Livingston instinctually juxtaposes found materials with intentions of articulating her current experience as it relates to the world at large. She displays her works to be understood in new contexts and to spark conversations about our overall human condition. Her work is accessible to all, found on walls of public buildings as well as showcases of interactive new-media-art distributed through the internet. Her sculptures, often visceral, use ‘low’ mediums varying from concrete, metals, wood and plastic to found objects. Reminiscences of family gatherings, as well as her parents’ accumulation of teapots and acoustic instruments have inspired themes in her art such as the body, memory, loss and desire; including her own specific biographic interpretations as she works at trying to understand the sources of her anxiety. Livingston is actively toiling at new creations. “There is so much in our community, society, and civilization to see and learn about, and for that my passions are extremely charged and my art is the by-product of human consciousness.”
