NIKITA GALE

Education

Born in Alaska, Gale studied anthropology at Yale University, graduating with a BA in 2006. The artist later completed an MFA at University of California, Los Angeles (2016), and studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2019).

Nikita Gale Artworks

Gale works primarily in installations comprising sculpture, light, sound, and video. She seeks to explore the human connection to material culture, investigating how our bodies interact with objects and technology. Often inhabiting an anthropological lens, Gale’s practice considers political, social, and economic systems.

LOW MAINTENANCE

Gale’s graduate presentation, LOW MAINTENANCE: i only believe in horsepower now (2016), consisted of an installation made up of video, light, sound, and sculpture, with the car as the object of central focus. One of the videos featured in the installation was a recording of a Los Angeles automobile show, in which a man dusts a slowly spinning car. Mechanical sounds filled the exhibition space.

A grey pegboard screen leaning against one wall of the installation read ‘Myth’, overlaid by a flickering light projecting other phrases, including ‘Perfect Sex’. The sculpture functioned in part as a surface for projection, while the installation sought to reveal the junctions between human psychology, object, and technology.

Instruments

Gale’s focus on material culture often becomes a fixation on a specific object that is then repeated throughout a given work. EXTENDED PLAY (2018) features a shelving unit carrying electric guitars, with twisting cables wrapped around metal frames. This focus on repetition reveals the nature of the mechanical reproduction of human objects.

The use of musical instruments is another feature of the artist’s work. DRRRUMMERRRRRR (2019–ongoing) consists of drums and cymbals arranged in tubs of water. Gale’s interest in sound emerges from the object itself and its relationship to the body. This extends into the creation of aural landscapes within the wider work.

DRRRUMMERRRRRR also explores how objects designed for human use can be disrupted, the potential futures of man-made material culture, and what could happen to human technologies when the human is removed.

IN A DREAM YOU CLIMB THE STAIRS

Gale’s first solo exhibition in the United Kingdom was held in 2022 at Chisenhale Gallery, London. Titled IN A DREAM YOU CLIMB THE STAIRS, the show featured large-scale installations with concrete sculptures of spotlights and curtains seen surrounded by bowls of water and dog leads dipped in concrete. The sound of whistles and clicks used to summon dogs echoed throughout the space.

Gale explored the dog as a form of technology, and how humans use them to extend their own sense of self. Every object in Gale’s work is a vessel for human interaction and the progress that might be achieved therein.

Awards and Accolades

Gale is the recipient of the Bucksbaum Award (2024) from the Whitney Museum of American Art, a FOCAFellowship (2021), a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2017), a Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship (2016), and a National Endowment for the Arts Southern Constellations fellowship (2013).

Exhibitions

Select solo exhibitions include END OF SUBJECT, 52 Walker, New York (2022); THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE, 56 HENRY, New York (2021); SOME WEATHER, CIRCA and Chisenhale Gallery, London/Tokyo/Seoul (2021); PRIVATE DANCER, California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2021); and AUDIENCING, MoMA PS1, New York (2020).

Website and Instagram

Nikita Gale’s website can be found here, and Instagram here.

Jean Watt | Ocula | 2023