This Body Overwhelms
This Body Overwhelms
March 4th – March 27th
This Body Overwhelms explores the nature of possessing a physical body while living through a pandemic. We find our bodies fragile in ways we may not have expected, but still surprisingly adaptable. The physicality of our own bodies and the bodies of ones we love becomes central to all acts.
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Nicole Banowetz is a Colorado sculptor who makes sewn inflatable sculptures and delicate assembled forms. Nicole’s work is inspired by the natural world. She addresses human qualities and relationships using the imagery she finds in the animal, plant, mineral, and bacterial worlds. She has made installations inspired by bacteria, parasitic fungus, viruses, radiolaria, rotifers, horses, and root systems. All these forms she recreates in soft inflatable sculptures, which she designs and sews on her sewing machine. Inflatables have power. They draw an audience in by promising the familiarity of childhood, a jumping castle, and the wacky waving man on the corner. The inflatable is familiar, soft, and comforting giving viewers the security they need to enter a space immerse themselves and become curious. With this curiosity comes a questioning state of mind. Nicole’s work creates a unique combination of the familiar and the strange which allows viewers to question the world around them.
Nicole has lived and worked internationally creating and / or showing work in India, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Finland, Taiwan, and England. Nicole has shown in the Biennial of the Americas, the Arvada Center, Ironton Gallery, Pirate Contemporary, Gray Contemporary, The Silos at Sawyer Yard, Saginaw Valley State University Art Gallery, The Denver Art Museum, Wonderspaces, and the Kreuzburg Pavilion. She has also created large light sculptures for the Amsterdam Light Festival and Canal Convergence, and outdoor installations for Breckenridge International Arts Festival, PASSAGES INSOLITES in Quebec City, Open Art in Sweden, and Environmental Art Exhibition Barfotastigen in Finland. She is in the permanent collection of the Denver Children’s Museum, Meow Wolf Denver, and the Denver Zoo in the US, and The Amsterdam Light festival’s Light Art Collection, and Kids Awesome Museum in Taipei, Taiwan.
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Public hours:
Thursdays through Sundays, 12:00pm – 6:00pm IF the outside temperature is expected to reach above 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Check our Instagram for up to date gallery hours.
The artist will be present activating the installation on the following dates
(weather permitted):
Saturday March 12
Friday March 18
Thursday March 24
Sunday March 27
Understudy is free-to-visit and open to all. We are located at the Colorado Convention Center / Theatre District light rail stop near 14th and Stout. Look for the Shantell Martin art bench.
