Critical Distance DIRECTORY Heather Nicol

Heather Nicol is a Toronto-based artist whose practice includes immersive sound installation, sculpture, performance and participatory actions. Her site-specific interventions explore the architectural, sonic, historic and operational conditions of her locations. These include enormous concourse atriums such Brookfield Place, Toronto (Santiago Calatrava, Arts Brookfield Canada), and New York’s Winter Garden (Cesar Pelli, Arts Brookfield USA). Other site interventions include a former rail terminus (ZK/U, Berlin, and another, Eastern Terminal, Buffalo NY), a decommissioned theme park (Ontario Place, IN/FUTURE, Art Spin, Toronto), Chateau de Courannces (Milly, France), Toronto’s downtown transit hub Union Station (Nuit Blanche), a storage locker facility (Art Spin, Toronto), and a theatre (Harbourfront Center, Toronto).

Throughout her interdisciplinary practice, she has worked with actors, musicians, choreographers, educators and fabricators. She has generated site-driven exhibition possibilities for her community as an independent curator / producer. She engaged thousands of audience at two Toronto programs, makingROOM, 2006, in a 30,000 square foot shuttered sweatshop, and Art School (dismissed), 2010, in a decommissioned public school. Both exhibition programs included scores of artists working across a wide range of disciplines. She has also curated exhibitions for galleries, including The John Paul Slusser (Michigan), Robert McLaughlin (Oshawa), and Critical Distance (Toronto). She has engaged with children, the elderly, migrant youth, and passers-by in a variety of interactive forums. In Toronto, a seventy performer “flash mob” was created in collaboration with choreographer Andrea Nann; participatory sound-making events have been presented in Ottawa and Berlin, and with Dancing With Parkinson’s / Koffler Gallery in Toronto. She recently performed the role of “the Sweeper” in her immersive installation September Song.

Image: Installation view of Unarchive, Inaugural exhibition at Artscape Youngplace, Toronto, 2013.