Pasadena, IL
Nora Maité Nieves
Mirage
The Residency Project, 880 Worcester Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91104
Mirage is a site-specific installation of 29 paintings by Nora Maité Nieves, a Puerto Rican artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. The experience of the pandemic prompted new elements in Nieves’s work. Confined to her city apartment during the lockdown, she began making paintings that were born out of a yearning for nature and open landscapes. For her installation at The Residency Project for the 2021 Terrain Biennial, Nieves was particularly drawn to the leftover shapes and motifs that are cut out and usually discarded in her artmaking process. The painted shapes in Mirage appear to “sprout” up from the front lawn, like abstract flowers grown from seeds of hope. “There is a feeling of hope in witnessing a blooming flower and realizing the beauty in the cycle of nature,” Nieves says. “The installation also makes reference to the American tradition of festive lawn flags in the suburban landscape. As vertical cut-outs, they use positive and negative space to interact with the sunlight, casting playful shadows that change over the course of the day.” Read more at