Christian Nicolay’s practice is a multifaceted mixture of long-term investigations and short spontaneous events exploring the nature of duality, the unity of opposites, and the hidden potential of the everyday “regarding the disregarded.” His artistic strategy of “noticing the unnoticeable” blurs into his daily routines and rituals and is summarized by “paying attention to systematic confusion: to arrive at a place I do not know how to get to through logical investigations, challenging and mapping the cycles of chance and fate.”
Nicolay is a graduate of the University of British Columbia Okanagan and lives and works out of Vancouver. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, film festivals, and residency exhibitions nationally and internationally, most recently at VAEFF—Video Art and Experimental Film Festival, New York City, 2014; Initial Gallery, Vancouver, 2014; Art Experience Gallery, Hong Kong 2013; Maple Ridge Art Gallery, 2013; ANEMIC—Independent Film and New Media Festival, Praha, Czech Republic, 2012; Schmiede Art Festival, Hallein, Austria, 2012; and the Museum of Medical Humanities, Taipei, Taiwan, 2012. He has worked as an artist in residence at Deep Wireless Festival, NAISA, Toronto, 2006; Äkkigalleria, Jyväskylä, Finland, 2010; and Taipei Artist Village, 2010. Nicolay has been the recipient of several awards, including the Council Visual and Media Arts travel grants and the Judges’ Award at the Make It Short Film Festival, Portland, 2012.
