Biography | Nicole Barakat
Nicole Barakat is a Kfarsghabi, Lebanese artist living on the lands and waters of the Gadigal People. She works with deep listening and intuitive processes with intentions to transform the conditions of everyday life. Her artwork engages unconventional approaches to art-making, creating intricate works that embody the love and patience characteristic of traditional textile practices. Her works include hand-stitched and hand-cut cloth and paper drawings, sculptural forms made with her own hair, cloth and plant materials as well as live work where she uses her voice as a material.
Nicole’s creative practice is rooted in re-membering and re-gathering her ancestral knowing, including coffee divination and more recently working with plants and flower essences for community care.
Nicole offers individual mentoring and masterclasses to support artists to develop new strategies for creative practice and engage in open-ended, intuitive and experimental, process-based research, in a supportive and safe setting.
Nicole has been a finalist in the Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award (2011 & 2013) and has been awarded grants from the Australia Council and Create NSW. Nicole undertook an artist residency in Bethlehem, Palestine in 2010 and was recently in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France in 2023.
Nicole recently curated the exhibition and public program, re-member, at the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery which featured the work of eight SWANA artists. She made her curatorial debut in 2014 with Lacebook at the Peacock Gallery, Auburn with a Curatorial Support Initiative grant from Museums and Galleries NSW.
Nicole’s experience includes twenty years of collaborative community-engagement where she sees respect and reciprocity as the leading principles that drive an exchange of knowledge, skills and imagination. Projects include; Shadow Places (Narrandera, NSW 2016) for the Powerhouse Museum in partnership with the Cad Factory and the award-winning Sydney Festival event Minto: Live (2011) with Campbelltown Arts Centre. Nicole most recently created a collaborative artwork with the Rohingya Women’s Development Organisation for the Powerhouse Museum’s exhibition Eucalyptusdom.
Barakat completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Craft Arts) in Textiles in 2002 with first class honours at the University of NSW Art & Design. She has exhibited and performed throughout Australia and internationally in Seattle, San Francisco, Stockholm and London. Nicole has worked as an educator in the arts for over 20 years, including lecturing in Fine Arts (textiles) at UNSW Art & Design (2003 – 2011) and working as an artist educator at the Art Gallery of NSW (2016 – 2018) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2013 – present).