Nina Cooke John

I am an architect with a multidisciplinary practice spanning the continuum between art and architecture. The work includes public art installations and works on paper. Architecture shows up in the installations in the analysis of the body in space. The work strives to create space that is activated by the body. Work that comes alive once it is engaged.

I was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, My work responds to the crisis of identity of moving from one world into another. The work explores identity as a layered experience, encompassing a multiplicity of possible manifestations in the complex engagement of individuals with urban life. It explores nostalgia as fragmented memory – a collapsing of the history we bring with us and the stories that we create. It investigates formal compositions that claim space for the process of self-actualization, space within which we can all be seen.

“When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.”