Nina Colette Pelaez is a poet, visual artist, and cultural producer whose multidisciplinary practice explores themes of visuality, identity, environmental displacement, and origins—from folklore to etymology. Stemming from her own experiences as an adoptee and the child of a Cuban exile, her work interrogates the relationships between place and displacement, particularly through intimate and embodied connections to nature.
With a particular interest in hybrid forms, Nina works with photography and cyanotype printing, natural pigments, and text to explore interconnectivity between human and non-human bodies, objects, and environments—both the natural and the domestic. Her projects call attention to the overlooked and in some cases, even undesirable, elements of a place. Materially, this includes detritus, dirt, and invasive plants. Conceptually, this includes narratives of personal and environmental displacement, domination, and destruction.
Nina holds a B.A. in Art History and English Literature from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in Art History from Williams College. She is currently and M.F.A. in Poetry at Bennington College. She works at the Williams College Museum of Art as the Curator of Programs and Interpretation.
