The Café Royal Cultural Foundation NYC has awarded a 2022 Fall Visual Grant to Nicki Cherry to help her with her project, “The Doctrine of Signatures”.

The Doctrine of Signatures is an installation of new sculptures with live tulips sprouting from crevices in each form. While each sculpture can be read as an independent creature, the sculptures also collectively appear as fragments of a larger body. Using UV grow lamps combined with the gallery’s ambient lighting, the tulips cycle through their lifespan—sprouting, blooming, and finally wilting.

This work continues Cherry’s use of tulips in reference to the Hieronymus Bosch painting, Cutting the Stone. The late 15th century  painting depicts a doctor surgically extracting a blossoming tulip bulb from a patient’s head, meant to represent the cause of the patient’s insanity. Cherry’s works in The Doctrine of Signatures consider the relationship between flower cultivation and the human desire—and frequent failure—to exert control over both one’s physical and mental well-being.

Nicki Cherry was born in the Midwest and moved to New York in 2019. Cherry creates monstrous fiberglass and concrete sculptures that  incorporate active systems of growth and decay—tulips bloom from stretching tendrils, ceramic bodies leak milky fluids, spine-shaped candles burn and diffuse scent. They punctuate these alien forms with recognizable objects, placing sculptures on medical stools, tethering them to visible circulation systems, and adorning them with bandaids and back-braces. Their work embraces the awkward and absurd to explore the frequent discomfort that comes with being a body.

After initially studying to become a particle physicist, Cherry received their BA from the University of Chicago in 2014 and their MFA from Yale School of Art in 2019. Their work has been exhibited at The Border Project Space, Flux Factory, ELM Foundation, and Shin Gallery in New York; the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts in Chicago; AUTOMAT Collective in Philadelphia; and the Ely Center for Contemporary Art in New Haven. They have received grants from the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and the Queens Council on the Arts. Their work has been featured in Passing Notes, Arte Fuse, Coastal Post, Art of Choice, and Floorr Magazine. Cherry is a 2022 AIM Fellow at the Bronx Museum of Arts.

The Doctrine of Signatures will be on view at NARS Foundation in Sunset Park, Brooklyn from April 14 - May 19, 2023.

Please visit Nicki’s Instagram and website for more information.