Nikesha Breeze 

Working from a Global African Diasporic, Afro-Centric and Afro-Futurist perspective, Nikesha Breeze’s interdisciplinary work reimagines inter-generational traumatic inheritance through the intersection of art and ritual. Nikesha’s work centers Black, Brown, Indigenous, Queer and Earth bodies existing within realms of past, present, and future. Nikesha uses performance art, film, painting, textiles, sculpture, and site-specific engagement to create otherworldly spaces centered on African Diasporic reclamation and honoring. Nikesha’s methodologies call upon ancestral memory and archival resurrection to bring forward the faces, bodies, stories, and spirits that have been systematically erased from the master narrative. Their performance art and film work reimagines relationships with the body, the invisible world, and the social space. 

Originally from Portland, Oregon Nikesha Breeze lives and works in the high desert of Taos, New Mexico, on the unceded land of the Taos Pueblo People. Nikesha is an African American descendant of the Mende People of Sierra Leone, and Assyrian American Immigrants from Iran. Nikesha has shown work both nationally and internationally, featured in the MOCADA Museum of Contemporary African Diasora Arts Brooklyn, The Albuquerque Museum, University Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, NkinKyim Museum of Ghana, and various galleries and art fairs across the globe.

Grantee Information

Website(s): https://nikeshabreeze.com 
Year(s) Awarded: 2022