Nicole Garneau - Coordinator for Arts in Youth and Community Development (AYCD)
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Biography
Nicole Garneau was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1970. She has a background in theater and is currently a performance artist based in Chicago. In 1993-94 Nicole worked as an actor in the Theatre of Moscow South-West, performing in Russian. Since returning to Chicago, she has built an interdisciplinary performance practice of site-specific, movement-based solo and collaborative performance art that often addresses a political issue; text-based works; percussive music, singing, and gender performance. She is the Assistant Director of Community Partnerships in the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago.
For 10 years, Nicole has worked closely with Insight Arts, an arts organization located in the East Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago that is dedicated to increasing access to cultural work that promotes social justice and defends human rights. At Insight Arts she facilitated youth arts programs and is currently a resident artist and board member.
Nicole's work is informed by feminism; struggle against white supremacy; the politics of the female body; sexuality; spirituality; violence against women and children; the prison-industrial complex; the death penalty; her experiences living and working in Moscow, Russia; and the 1995 Chicago heat wave disaster. She is interested in creating performance and visual art work that is directly political, critically conscious, and community building. She has an artist web site at www.nicolegarneau.com.
Educator
Courses Taught:
Introduction to Youth Arts Practicum
Making and Unmaking Whiteness
(in the Cultural Studies Program, Liberal Education Department)
Experience
- MA, Interdisciplinary Art, Columbia College Chicago
- BA, Theater/Russian, University of Illinois at Chicago
- Founder/member, Big Smith Performance Ensemble
- Development Coordinator, Circuit Court of Cook County
- Development Associate, Southwest Women Working Together
Contact
Office: (312) 369-8856
Fax: (312) 369-8063
Email: ngarneau@colum.edu