NICOLE SALIMBENE
  • Works
    • WE ARE WATER
    • ARTFORUM TAPESTRY SERIES
    • RECEIPT TAPESTRY SERIES
    • UNFOLDING
    • KNOWING YOUR WATER
    • MOVED BY WATER SERIES
    • AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CONSUMPTION: FIVE SCROLLS
    • DIVINE FEMININE SERIES
    • MAKEUP SERIES: TREMBLING
    • SCAPULAR SERIES
    • MENDING
    • STUDIES IN INVASIVENESS
    • COMMUNITY PROJECTS
    • ARCHIVE >
      • STONE TO STONE
      • PROTEST RECEIPTS
      • FIGURES IN CEMENT
      • BOX SERIES
      • FACTORY SHRINE
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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CONSUMPTION: FIVE SCROLLS

2011-2017, materials: receipts, digital photography, thread, wood, acrylic paint
Picture
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CONSUMPTION: 5 SCROLLS
Autobiography of Consumption: Five Scrolls tells a story of my habits as a consumer as well as an American story of consumption.
The scroll is an ancient form used throughout time to record history, to relay promise and imagination, or to simply tell stories. Some scrolls were sacred, some poetic, and some the ordinary documentation of the seasons or life at a particular moment in time. While parchment or linen may have been the material of ancient scrolls, I have used a contemporary medium familiar and yet overlooked by most: the receipt.

I have constructed the scrolls from my collected receipts over a six-month period. In total, I have hand sewn 50 yards of receipts; each of the five scrolls is 30 ft long and together they are 3 ft across. Directly on to the receipts, I have printed my digital photographs, documents of where I live and travel. While the photos are autobiographical, they are also related to a larger story of energy use, nature, and power structures. Growing up in Niagara Falls, NY during Love Canal 
(an environmental disaster resulting in the first US EPA Superfund), I have included photographs of the Falls, a monument to the visionary Nikola Tesla and the landscape of factories where my father labored for forty years. 
​
These symbolic images juxtaposed with the information of my consumptive habits show my own complicated relationship with my natural and built environment, with class and privilege, and with a political and artistic voice in the face of making change. Through this work, I am using the instructiveness of the autobiographical form to hold a mirror up to viewers, so they may reflect on their own environmental, political and social behaviors.
 

Studying the text and images on the receipts, we begin to see how common refrains such as “Change Due” or “Self-Checkout” resonate against an image of the Capitol on the day of President Obama’s inauguration or wind turbines from the plains of west Texas. A closer textual reading of the receipts also reveals a diary of my habits, fragments of cultural information about who serves and sells, and the poetics and absurdity of the market’s product language. The intention is to show a contemporary elegance in the transformation of turning garbage into art and to stimulate dialogue and contemplation about internal and external sustainability. Fundamentally, I am asking, “What is enough?” 
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Group Exhibition:
Forecast
November 3, 2022–January 22, 2023
Curated by Alissa Maru in collaboration with Hannah Barco and Sue Wrbican

Opening Reception & Artist Talk
Friday, November 4, 6–8pm (please note time correction)
Tephra ICA at Signature
www.tephraica.org

​​22 artist's predictions: Rahne Alexander, Nina Q. Allen, Laure Drogoul, Cheryl Edwards, Heloisa Escudero, Maggie Gourlay, Mira Hecht, Kay Hwang, Veronica Jackson, Jessica Kallista, Maria Karametou, Isabel Manalo, Ceci Cole McInturff, Meeting Ground (Susan Main and MJ Neuberg), Zia Palmer, Judith Pratt, Lisa Rosenstein, Nicole Salimbene, Asha Santee, Kat Thompson, Jessica Valoris, Naoko Wowsugi

© 2022 Nicole Salimbene

  • Works
    • WE ARE WATER
    • ARTFORUM TAPESTRY SERIES
    • RECEIPT TAPESTRY SERIES
    • UNFOLDING
    • KNOWING YOUR WATER
    • MOVED BY WATER SERIES
    • AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CONSUMPTION: FIVE SCROLLS
    • DIVINE FEMININE SERIES
    • MAKEUP SERIES: TREMBLING
    • SCAPULAR SERIES
    • MENDING
    • STUDIES IN INVASIVENESS
    • COMMUNITY PROJECTS
    • ARCHIVE >
      • STONE TO STONE
      • PROTEST RECEIPTS
      • FIGURES IN CEMENT
      • BOX SERIES
      • FACTORY SHRINE
  • ABOUT
    • STATEMENT
    • BIO
    • CV
  • PRESS
  • NEWS
  • WORKSHOPS
  • CONTACT