Nicole Eboni, a curator-artist, and scholar with over three decades of experience in the fine art profession. Nicole’s skills range from archives and research to curatorial and art handling practices. Her experience started as a fine art major as an undergraduate student.
Utilizing her fine art degree, Nicole has experience in many departments in galleries to museums. Participating while demonstrating her expertise, she has assisted in the art handling and exhibition design of art fairs, gallery exhibitions and museums. All while gaining professional experience in procurement and liaising.
Nicole Eboni holds a Bachelors of Fine Art from Old Dominion University and a Masters in Art History and Visual Culture from Lindenwood University. Her scholarship consists of how portraiture and figurative art played an important role in documenting and discovering the Black American experience, specifically during the Civil Rights Movement,
Coined in the 1960s, the Black Arts Movement started during the Civil Rights era. Black artist, such as Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Joyce Scott Barkley Hendricks, Jacob Lawrence, and much more who shared their life experience through art, whether it was in a figurative form such as Benny Andrews and his political series or those portraits taken by Barkley Hendricks only to be turned into life size portraits in oil paints.
This movement of portraiture in Black art shaped how we see Black bodies in artwork today, specifically in contemporary art. Kara Walker and her Black and White silhouettes depicting the slave era, Simone Leigh in her ceramic bust representing Black American women and Amy Sherald created life size portraits of Black figures, demonstrating almost how Barkley Hendricks portrayed his subjects in everyday life scenes.
The research I have conducted and continue to explore has given insight and information to understand how we see the Black body today.
I hope that this bring more exposure to Black artist and a discourse between portraiture and figurative art.