GAME ART: TABITHA NIKOLAI'S DOWNSTREAM A SHINING WIRE (2019)
September 17 - November 1 2019
Open Signal
2766 NE Martin Luther King, Jr Blvd
Portland, OR 97212
Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games, cosplay and earnest rites of suburban occult. Her work has been shown an the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and Ganka Gallery in Tokyo. She was formerly the assistant and co-curator at Place, Surplus Space and Compliance Division in Portland, Oregon. She uses video games and virtual reality to create fictional worlds addressing themes such as the relationship between society and technology, sex, gender, and identity.
For example, Utopia Without You transformed a gallery space into a gamer's den, and looked at video games as a means of isolation and a retrenchment from an adversarial society.
Shrine Maidens of the Unseelie Court (2017) is a journey into an uncanny environment for PC and Mac.
Ineffable Glossolalia (2017) is a virtual environment made in the Unity game engine for the HTC Vive virtual reality platform, as well as PC and Mac desktop.
Her new show, Downstream a Shining Wire, opens September 17 at Open Signal, in Portland, Oregon.
Downstream a Shining Wire sifts through today’s dystopia to create something hopeful. Using virtual reality, Open Signal New Media Fellow Tabitha Nikolai and friends revisit a demolished shopping mall from her childhood. The exhibition incorporates interactive video games, medieval illustrations and video projection art featuring scenes from Richard Adams’ classic novel Watership Down.LINK:
Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist originally from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games and cosplay. She created Downstream a Shining Wire during her winter 2019 residency as part of Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship in collaboration with Zanna Kerrigan, Cassandra Gladwin, sam, Lilium Kobayashi, Allynn Carpenter and Kelly Thomas.
Tabitha Nikolai (all images and videos (c) Tabitha Nikolai)