Kika Nicolela is a Brazilian artist, filmmaker and independent curator based in Brussels since 2014. Nicolela graduated in film studies at the University of Sao Paulo and then completed a Master of Fine Arts at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDK). She was the recipient of several prominent international grants and awards, and she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Her videos have been screened and received awards at festivals in more than 30 countries. Nicolela is interested in the space between what we understand by reality and fiction. Having video and new technologies as tools, she proposes experiences that question the stories we make about the world and about ourselves.
Keynote during the symposium:
The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence*
or
FEELING WITH THE OTHER
My work generally expresses itself into a collection of human beings—often in a situation of social invisibility—inserted into a proposed situation and their resulted actions, reactions, words. Through the presentation of excerpts of a selection of my past video works, I will explore the idea that empathy is at the heart of my creative process, and how my works produce new links and relations—between participants and me, between the audience and the subjects, between the participants and their environment. Furthermore, I will speculate about how empathy and caring between humans and also between humans and non-humans is our biggest chance to save the world.
*Clarice Lispector