Wine of the World is a solo exhibition by Michaela Nichelle that examines how kinship is formed, utilizing both domestic and public archives. Through the examination of Black women’s roles and labor, Nichelle honors the legacies of memory-keeping and the radical fight for preservation and justice she’s inherited. Through jacquard weavings, hand-sewn flags, and performance documentation, Witness Nichelle’s Altar Keeping practice as she boldly answers the question “how y’all kin?” Hatch studio artists will also have open studios during HNAF– explore work from Mike Kelly, Andrew Dall’olmo, Tisch Mikhail Lewis, and more!
Michaela Nichelle is an interdisciplinary artist, archivist, and arts educator whose practice lives at the intersection of Black girlhood studies, memory, and fine arts. Working across domestic installation, food narratives, culturally specific performance, text, and archival practices, she explores Black girlhood as a site of care, remembrance, and communal knowledge. Grounded in homegirling theory, Nichelle approaches artmaking as a heartfelt practice of remembering and honoring herself alongside generations of Black women and girls whose lives, labor, and everyday rituals shape collective histories. She positions herself as an Altar Keeper: a caretaker, historian, and steward of communal memory who tends to the cultural and spiritual practices that sustain Black life. Through this practice, she asks how remembrance can become an act of liberation, imagining the altar as both a physical and conceptual space where Black girlhood is preserved, celebrated, and continually restored.
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