Nekisha Durrett

Durrett currently lives and works in Washington, DC where she creates bold and playful large scale installations and public art that aim to make the ordinary enchanting and awe inspiring while summoning subject matter that is often hidden from plain sight. She earned her BFA at The Cooper Union in New York City and MFA from The University of Michigan School of Art and Design as a Horace H. Rackham Fellow. Durrett has exhibited her work throughout the Washington, DC area to include the US Botanic Garden, West End Library, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Flashpoint and Hillyer Art Galleries, and Arlington Arts Center. Nationally, she has exhibited at Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe AZ; Diaspora Vibe Gallery, Miami, Fl; Rush and Corridor Galleries, New York. Durrett has been named one of 40 Under 40 Washingtonians to Watch by Washingtonian Magazine, received multiple project grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and was an Artist-in-Residence at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. Durrett is currently a finalist in the National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and is featured in “The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today” exhibition. Her most recent installation titled “Up ‘til Now”, a freestanding, solar powered sculpture that evokes the history of Washington, DC’s landscape and architecture, can be found in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. She is currently in production on numerous projects including a permanent installation on the glass- walled vestibule in the newly renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington and a wall mounted public sculpture in the Liberty City community of Miami, Florida in collaboration with conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas.