Nicole Clouston

PhD IN VISUAL ARTS, YORK UNIVERSITY, SPRING 2020

I work with mud from Lake Ontario and the microbes that live in it to explore the enmeshed nature of life. Microbes – organisms invisible to the naked eye – form vast, complex communities around, on, and within our bodies. Microbial life passes in and out of us, permeating what we perceive to be the barrier between ourselves and everything else. This community of microbes supports our growth, helps us to eat, protects us from pathogens, produces vitamins, and much more we do not fully understand. I was immediately fascinated and repulsed when I became aware that the microbial cells in my body outnumbered my human cells, and that without them I would not be able to survive. Since then I have been grappling with my relationship to microbes and webs of connections that extend far beyond my body.

View the exhibition images below

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Nicole Clouston is a practice-based researcher and teacher who completed her Ph.D. in Visual Art at York University in Toronto. In her practice, she asks: What happens when we acknowledge, through an embodied experience, our connection to a world teeming with life both around and inside us? Nicole has exhibited across Canada and internationally, most recently in Detroit, Michigan. She was the artist in residence at the Coalesce Bio Art Lab at the University at Buffalo and the artist in residence at Idea Projects: Ontario Science Centre’s Studio Residencies at MOCA.

Website: www.nicoleclouston.com