Nick Drain

The Black, American Flag series of works was produced at a time where I needed to distance my body from the representations of my experience in my work. Existing as a black person within a predominantly white institution had become especially exhausting, and I sought a surrogate form — something that could stand in as a representation of not only myself, but those who shared in the same experiences and feelings. I arrived at the conceptual framework of the flag, and the practice of making my own became an effort to document my feelings and reclaim space in environments — as small as my institution, and as large as the United States as a whole — that felt inhospitable. When I first presented this image of one of the sculptures to a mentor, he suggested that the image could exist as a work in its own right, and I came to realize that he was right.

Nick Drain is a fine artist born in Chicago, IL, who lives and works in Milwaukee, WI. His work investigates the complex relationship between blackness visibility at the site of the camera. He has exhibited locally and nationally, most notably showing work at the International Center for Photography in New York City, NY, the Colorado Photographic Art Center in Denver, CO, and was named in the inaugural 2021 Silver List from the Silver Eye Center for Photography. Nick attended the Yale Norfolk School of Art in 2019 and received a BFA from the New Studio Practice program at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2020.