Nikki Nita Ramírez is a gallerist and curator based between New York and London. Ramírez is the co-founder and co-director of Danuser & Ramírez, a contemporary art gallery based in London championing emerging artists with underrepresented voices. Her previous positions have been at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and most recently, The Studio Museum in Harlem. Her bachelor’s degree being in Art History and Conservation in Florence, Italy opened a new way of looking at curation in a transhistorical approach. Ramírez’s practice is based on bridging the gap between the ancient antiquities of the Baroque and the contemporary art scene today. Ramirez uses storytelling through her practice to invite viewers into a narrative journey in a curatorial project. She achieves this through the use of “Baroquing,” a new conceptual technology in which the lines of reality are skewed using techniques of lighting, sound, and space modification. Her practice offers creativity to also be a crucial part in curation. “Curators are inherently creative individuals, where the ‘space’ becomes our ‘canvas’ to narrate a story that seldom people have read.”
Nikki Nita Ramírez
Ramírez’s practice revolves around collaboration and care, as they are vital to her understanding of the curatorial role. She aims to uncover broader regimes of visibility through a multitude of perspectives. “I have a curiosity and a commitment to solving intriguing and complex challenges. My goal is to demystify the art space in a way that engages historically disadvantaged groups in a new way.”
O.T.O.
OTO (One Time Only) was a live exhibition held at FOLD London, on 11 May 2023, which moved outside of the typical white cube to a nightclub. OTO, taking place away from the exhibitionary and on the late-night dance floor, activating the audience in that space.This curatorial intervention responded to our interest in the themes of music, liveness and bodies within the moving image and asked what the intersection of these topics could look and feel like. At the same time, we aimed to review the status of the music video and its place within the field of moving image.
The night consisted of three distinct sets featuring new work by artists Tarzan Kingofthejungle, Anna Clegg, Ahaad Alamoudi and Adam Farah-Saad, with DJ sets by HabibTati and Hellikisto. The sets were punctuated by screenings of David Hall’s series of works, ‘TV Interruptions ‘93’. Further information can be found on the On the Night page.
Further elements of the project consisted of creative curatorial writings, presented on this website as a series of rushes, inspired by the raw tapes which are produced during a day of shooting. These texts explore the connection between music videos and wider culture with greater specificity, responding to individual geographical and personal contexts or selected music videos. The texts are presented alongside a foreword by Lewis G. Burton.
The project also included digital commissions produced for the LUX instagram account by artists Hugo Hutchins and Maria Mahfooz.
