Nicole Awai

Nicole Awai is a multimedia artist who is based in Brooklyn, NY. Awai has been a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painting and Sculpture, an Art Matters Grant, a Puffin Foundation Grant and the inaugural BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize. Awai was a Resident Faculty Artist at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2024. Her work has been exhibited at such venues as PS1 MOMA, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Kemper Museum, Museum of Latin American Art, California African American Museum, MCA Denver, the Biennale of Ceramic in Contemporary Art, the Busan Biennale, The Times Art Center Berlin, and the Vilcek Foundation.

Awai’s work has been featured many publications including the New York Times, Hyperallergic, BOMB, Art Forum, Artnet, NY Arts, Glasstire, Austin Chronicle, Small Axe: A journal of Caribbean Criticism, The International Review of African American Arts, Callaloo, Black Renaissance Noire NYU, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas.

Her solo exhibition Nicole Awai: In the thick of it at the Christian-Green Gallery, University of Texas at Austin (2024) was a selection of works from the previous 20 years of her practice. Awai was an artist in residence at the Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, Captiva Island, FL in spring 2026. She is currently a participant in the residency at Art Cake in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.