From June 18 through July 3, 2026, Gallery 198, located at 198 24th Street in Brooklyn, presented MEMENTOS OF A LIVING PRACTICE, alongside Betsy Damon’s exhibition WATER, AGENT OF LIFE. Together, the two exhibitions brought our distinct practices into an ecological dialogue through art — press release.
My exhibition, MEMENTOS OF A LIVING PRACTICE, brought together paintings, photographs, films, drawings, field notebooks & texts emerging from two ongoing projects: Karstic-Actions & Bird-State —artist statement.
These works emerge from two ongoing practices: Karstic-Actions & Bird-State. Karstic-Actions develop through live, full-body engagement with movement, balance, raw pigments, water & the immediate conditions of a performance. Bird-State grows from lived encounters unfolding over time—returning to specific places, observing closely, moving through landscapes, & engaging with birds and the more-than-human world through the body & the senses. Despite their contrasting forms, both practices begin in embodied attention & transform lived experience into material traces. In the context of the exhibition at Gallery 198, the works function as active mementos: not static records, but traces, residues & transformations of experience that carry the energy of those actions & encounters into the gallery space.
The exhibition opened on June 18 with a live Karstic-Action with Betsy Damon & accompanied by percussionist Ben Chadabe.
Opening Karstic-Action: Flow
Betsy offered the word Flow as the prompt for the performance, drawing from her decades-long engagement with water as a life-giving force & an agent of ecological and social change. Working with water, raw pigments, egg yolks, pastel, movement & embodied attention, I responded to the space, Betsy’s prompt & Ben’s live percussion. The action unfolded balance, rhythm, sound & material shaped the painting as it happened.
Karstic-Actions are an open-ended series of live action paintings I began in 2011. My body becomes an instrument within the work, often painting in headstand or through movements that shift ordinary visual orientation. Each action develops through the immediate conditions of the place, the materials, the collaborators & the moment.
Flow — Live Karstic-Action with Nicole Peyrafitte, prompted by Betsy Damon, with Ben Chadabe on percussion. Gallery 198, June 18, 2026.
Downstairs Gallery:
6 Eutrophic Paintings
Their title refers to condition of aquatic body environments—saturated/depleted with nutrients, organic matter & intense biological activity. The paintings developed through my repeated visits to the tidal wetlands of Plumb Beach, where water, vegetation, birds, mud, debris & seasonal change continually reshape the landscape.
The downstairs gallery included six Eutrophic paintings made from papers carrying the traces of Karstic-Action performances created with Pierre Joris in Luxembourg in 2021.
The papers were originally placed beneath the actions to receive pigment, water, footprints, gestures, spills & the residue of the performances. I brought them back to Brooklyn, where they remained in my studio before being reworked & transformed into autonomous paintings.
6 Eutrophic Paintings —Pastels on Paper —2022— 23″ x 33″
FREEE & Overstory
The Karstic-Action, FREEE was created on Oct 22, 2022, in solidarity with the women of Iran to protest the Iranian regime following brutal death of Mahsa Amini‘s. I am deeply inspired by their antediluvian strength resurfacing with force & clarity in their courageous actions. The action also prompted a text I wrote loosely based on a Hymn to Inanna, with music by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte.
FREEE: Paper/ Pastels/ Tempera 62.75″ x 42″
During the action, sheets of paper were deliberately placed across the floor. They protected the surface while also acting as active receivers of pigment, water, bodily movement & the physical energy of the performance.
One of these floor grounds later became OVERSTORY. I returned to the residual paper, working into what the action had deposited there. The traces of the live event became the ground for another stage of the work.
Overstory (2022) Paper/ Pastels/ Tempera —78″ x 42″
Vote 2024
The exhibition also included four VOTE paintings created for Action VOTE in 2024. These works bring together Karstic-Actions & Bird-State: the word VOTE is painted through direct, gestural action, while each bird emerges from sustained observation & encounter. The series includes a Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, American Kestrel & Yellow-crowned Night Heron.
VOTE 2024 : Prussian blue / Terre Romaine pigments / Watercolor crayons on paper 13″ x 19″
Upstairs Gallery:
Bird-State
The upstairs gallery presented works from Bird-State, my ongoing practice of repeated encounters with birds, place & the other-than-human world.
Bird-State begins with going to see birds. I return to particular locations through changing seasons, often traveling by foot, bicycle or kayak. I observe, photograph, film, draw, write & listen. What is absorbed through these encounters moves across photographs, films, paintings, drawings, notebooks & texts.
The installation brought together several bodies of work connected to birds encountered along the Brooklyn shoreline & during travels to Japan & Iceland.
Cranes
The crane installation included paintings, photographs & field notebooks developed through encounters with Red-crowned Cranes in Hokkaido, Japan.
The photographs register precise moments of behavior, movement & relation. The painting carry the color, rhythm, temperature & physical intensity of being present with the cranes in the winter landscape. The notebooks hold another register observations, drawings, notes, questions & scientific & historical infiormation.
Purple Sandpipers — Amor de Lonh
The Purple Sandpiper installation, presented in the upstairs gallery, included photographs, two pastel paintings & the film Amor de Lonh: Calidris maritima. I encountered these birds repeatedly along the Brooklyn shoreline—resilient small bodies moving across rocks & surf, no matter the weather. The title Amor de Lonh—“love from afar”—describes a relation sustained through distance, an intimacy built through repeated return & attentive observation.
Fulmars
The fulmar works emerged from observations made in Iceland. Photographs & as the ot field notebook brought together the birds’ physical presence, movement, habitat & the notes made during those encounters.
The notebook is not preparatory material for a finished work. It is part of the work itself: a space where perception continues through drawing, language, memory & bodily experience.
Leporellos
Public Programs
June 26: Betsy & I presented short films during Living Practices, followed by a conversation moderated by Alex Jones.
June 30: I presented Bird-State: A Performative Reading, bringing together my poetry, images & voice, alongside selected poems by Pierre Joris. The performance extended the exhibition into language & sound, moving through field observations, encounters with birds, projected images & the poetic dialogue between our distinct practices.
