Throughout her career, Nicole Cherubini has been challenging conventions and expectations of sculpture through her primary medium of clay. Born in 1970 in Boston, Cherubini received a BFA in Ceramics from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1993 and an MFA in Visual Arts from New York University in 1998. Subverting form, Cherubini builds dysfunctional vessels/objects that cannot contain; she debases their traditional purpose and recasts them as new forms. The exterior of her sculptures is where Cherubini rejects compliant beauty and pushes to the edges of “too much.” Making use of space, clashing, and tipping into the uncouth is political vocabulary for Cherubini. Even her pedestals are multi-patterned and dripping with glaze. Appropriating and transgressing class signifiers of ornamentation, from fake chains to high fashion, are acts of defection. The resulting mashups are a convivium gone wild.
Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia, PA), the Jersey City Museum (Jersey City, NJ), the Nassau County Museum of Art (Roslyn Harbor, NY), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL), the Santa Monica Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga, NY) and University Art Museum (Albany, NY). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including the Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (Boston, MA), the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO), MoMA PS1 (Long Island City, NY), Museo de Arte Raûl Anguiano (Guadalajara, México), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), the Rose Art Museum (Waltham, MA), Sculpture Center (Long Island City, NY), the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga, NY), The University of Arkansas Museum (Fayetteville, AR), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, MN), Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (North Adams, MA), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR) and The West Norway Museum of Decorative Art (Bergen, Norway).
Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, such as the Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (Boston, MA), the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL), the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI), the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery (Saratoga, NY), the Progressive Collection (Mayfield Village, OH), Tishman Speyer Collection (New York, NY), and University Art Museum (Albany, NY). In 2019, Cherubini was an artist in residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA). She is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, Art Matters Grant, NEA Travel Grant among others. Cherubini lives and works in Brooklyn and Hudson, NY.
