Nicola Anthony (b.1984) is a visual artist based between Dublin and Singapore, and an elected member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors. In recent years she has completed three artist residencies, had a solo show at Singapore Art Museum, exhibited in the Kuala Lumpur Biennale, been invited to install public sculptures in Singapore and Los Angeles, and received accolades and recognition for her work. She has been practicing for fifteen years and created exhibitions and commissions for art institutions and cultural foundations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Myanmar, USA, UK, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Anthony collects human stories and testimonies, empowering and transforming them into contemporary art. From the playful to the heart-wrenching, each artwork is shaped by the narrative it contains. Some take the form of text sculptures, others portray traces of lost stories and unheard voices through burnt, worn and layered surfaces. She focuses her work on untold narratives, social memory, and place memory, with specific interest in the nature of storytelling and the way we all experience time differently.
The process of capturing unheard voices has led her artistic research to navigate topics such as: social and political undercurrents in Myanmar, Singapore, SouthEast Asia; Narratives that pierce through time to WW2 such as Holocaust survivors testimonies and stories that are found in the porous surfaces of London’s bombed buildings; and individual untold stories from disenfranchised communities and survivors of emotional trauma.
Nicola collects paper aeroplanes, proverbs, poems, riddles, birdsong recordings, curses, confessions, laments, praises, prayers, prophecies, and public announcement.