Nickola Pottinger’s practice spans drawing, collage, and sculpture. Her objects often appear in the round, on the wall, or sometimes within tableaux. She refers to her sculptural works as “duppies” (Jamaican patois for ghosts) in reverence to her Jamaican ancestry and the West Indian community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn where she was raised and still resides today. Composed out of recovered heirlooms, excavated and recycled materials, Pottinger creates pigmented paper pulp from family documents, past artworks, and rubble using a handheld kitchen mixer. Akin to clay or concrete and imbued with memories of her family lineage as well as folklore heard as a child, she embellishes her mystical creations, which sometimes manifest as protectors, couriers or even spirits of the deceased, with oil pastel and watercolor, casts of her hands and face, teeth, gilded Yagua leaf, lava rocks, Bantu hair knots and more. Her titles often reference their origins, places, memories, and adages specific to Jamaica. Sliding between figure and object, with references to her body, as maker and matter, her “duppies” resemble fantastical presences, spiritual talisman, and anthropomorphized furniture, with narratives fueled by dreams, actuality, and something in-between.
Nickola Pottinger was born in 1986 in Kingston, Jamaica and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2008. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the New Museum, NY, Swivel Gallery, Brooklyn, Chapter NY, Sargent’s Daughters, NY, Deanna Evans Project, NY, Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, Mrs. Gallery, Queens, and Jenkins Johnson Gallery, NY, among many others.
Nickola Pottinger: fos born is on view at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum through January 11, 2026