“In everything I make, my experience is always one of being looked at. It’s like W.E.B Du Bois’ “double consciousness” – I am aware of myself as myself, but then I’m also aware of myself in relation to my Blackness and how it determines the conditions of my existence. They are not easily split apart. I’ve never had the privilege of just being able to be a representation of myself. So as someone who’s never gotten to think about myself NOT in relation to others, it’s the only way I know how to make work – to consider this “me” but then also who’s on the other side of it.” – Nick Drain

With In Plain Sight, Nick Drain exhibits a collection of photographs and sculptures centered on blackness and the politics of representation. The exhibition proposes a refiguring of our traditional understanding of blackness and explores the delicate relationship between subject and viewer. In Plain Sight questions who looks, how we look, and the implication of that gaze. In doing so, Drain aims to replace historic and performed representations of blackness, shaped by capitalism and consumer interest, for alternative, possibly unknown modes of representation, identification, and expression.

​

​

​

Nick Drain is a fine artist born in Chicago, IL, who lives and works in Milwaukee, WI. He has exhibited both locally and nationally, most notably showing work at the International Center for Photography in New York City, NY and the Colorado Photographic Art Center in Denver, CO. In 2019, Nick completed a residency at the Yale Norfolk School of Art. Nick will graduate from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design from the New Studio Practice program with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2020.