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Nicole Maloof ...

"I work predominantly on paper, utilizing drawing, printmaking and collage to create narratives that revolve around the absurdity and black humor encountered in life. I have always been perplexed by human behavior, and so this fascination generally acts as the basis or foundation for my work. I make these pictorial stories as a way to understand better the arbitrary rules of culture, and through black humor attempt to uncover aspects that usually remain purposefully unseen. Reoccurring themes in my work include violence, power structures, and desire. However my story telling is somewhat unconventional, as there is no definite beginning, middle or conclusion. I like to think of my images as "moments," with no definitive context, as this mirrors our own limited experience embedded within the course of human history.

My most recent work is a loose response to current global issues related to wealth. From 2009 to 2011 I resided in South Korea, where I observed an extreme fetishism for luxury goods and brands. Upon coming home to the US, I was confronted with our own sobering problems—unemployment, bailouts, and a quickly shrinking middle class—all caused by those who hold most of the country’s wealth. Through drawing, I wanted to ask the question, what happens when we lust after objects, so much to the point that it consumes our being? In this series of work people horrifically become the things that they covet, and also reach to unconventional objects for fulfillment, giving emotional weight to nearly weightless objects: smoke, clouds, and balloons. I focused on crystals as the main object of desire because of their conflicting relationship with human beings. Gems have been desired by people for all of history, and yet if our bodies come too close to their physical process—if the minerals in our bodies crystallized out—pain and horror would follow. Through these narratives I twisted the old truism, "You are what you eat," into "You are what you want."

Nicole Maloof was born in 1983 in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her BFA in painting and a BA in chemistry from Boston University in 2006. From 2009-2011 she resided in South Korea on a teaching Fulbright, and now currently lives in Boston, MA.