Nicole Chaput

Sleepwalking Portraits, Oil on polypropylene, 39x32cm, Colorful portraits, 2025

2025

Nicole creates speculative anatomies for those who call themselves women. She compares the artifice involved in the construction of the feminine in western visual culture to how the painting tradition has finessed representation to animate its canvases. Without denying these imposed definitions, her practice reevaluates the iconographic histories of women, in an arduous and violent negotiation with new ways of selfrepresentation. Chaput’s depictions of feme bodies resist being slashed by a picture frame. Their physical support becomes a sculptural element that morphs images into pictorial bodies. As with pearls, Nicole Chaput’s paintings generate their own forms, guided by their desire to exist in the shell of anomaly. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018) and participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (ME, 2019). Chaput has received grants and fellowships from the former institutions; as well as a grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (NY, 2020) for experimental artists and the Young Creator’s Grant awarded by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts twice (Mexico, 2018-2019 and 2024-2025). Her work has been shown in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Recent solo exhibitions include Embalsamada con picante (Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, 2024); Convent Carpaccio (Galería Agustina Ferreyra, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2023); Mi madre es un ventilador con cara de vaca (Biquini Wax, Mexico City, 2022); and Venus Atómica (Galería Karen Huber, Mexico City, 2021). She has been included in numerous group exhibitions at Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, BR); Deli Gallery (Mexico City, MX); Museo Cabañas (Jalisco, MX); Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL); Antiguo Colegio San Ildefonso (Mexico City, MX); Disneyland Paris (Melbourne, AUS); Chalton Gallery (London, UK); among many others. Her work has been reviewed in various publications such as Artforum, Frieze and Terremoto.