Taylor Lee Nicholson, "Shopping Cart Collapsing Beneath the Weight of My Needs”
paper mache, aluminum foil, felt, pipe cleaners, price stickers, silicone, paper pulp, and confetti
40x46x26”
2022
STATEMENT
I was raised on garbage: not just a steady diet of hot dogs, Vienna sausages and Spam (the garbage parts of the pig), but a lot of Jerry Springer and The Price is Right. The spectacle and noise of this programming taught me at an early age that poverty is loud. I consumed a lot of tabloids, trash magazines that speculated who killed JonBenet Ramsey, and relished the sordid details of Princess Diana’s bloody death. These magazines had a fetish for deterioration (and of course the occasional alien abduction or Wolf Boy). Little did I know, as I was drinking dollar store soda and listening to Barker’s contestants scream out bids on washing machines, my family was experiencing a decay of our own. Our house was literally falling apart, sinking further into the ground every time it rained. In secret, my grandmother hunched in the basement, stacking heaps of newspaper and tabloids to absorb the water and brace the foundation of our home. She was keeping our white trash family afloat on a mound of molded paper pulp, slimy pink with mildew and smeared with Priscilla Presley.
I’m a Garbage Person, embracing “trash” as both subject and material, deconstructing ideas of high and low culture through my approach to craft. Hooked on nostalgia, I scour eBay for tabloids from my childhood (1990s-2000s) and bedazzle them with beds and sequins reminiscent of my grandmother’s jar of loose embroidery embellishments. With the tabloids I intend to illuminate the proliferation of violence as spectacle and entertainment that fetishizes trauma. We are complicit in this system (as Mike Kelley would have us Pay For Your Pleasure) and we don’t just consume violence; we also violently consume, from Monica Lewinsky to Amber Heard. My cannibalistic consumption of others has been not only encouraged by surrogate father figures like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, but commodified in the attention economy. Herein lies my obsession with papier-mâché (French for “chewed paper”). My sculptures of severed heads, Thanksgiving dinner, and Buzzfeed quizzes are specifically composed of Black Friday coupons, unsolicited loan offers to decrease my debt, and credit card statements that show how deeply my possessions have possessed me. I have been unable to exorcise the poltergeist of poverty that has haunted me since childhood, its grip empowered by push notifications and phantom vibration syndrome. I’m not really exploring supernatural horror, but rather material horror, the idea that beneath everything there is no aura, no soul; only emptiness.
BIO
Taylor Lee Nicholson (b. 1990, they/them) is a genderqueer multidisciplinary artist and curator who loves to mix kitsch and the grotesque in order to dissect the relationship between identity and consumer culture in late stage capitalism. As an Absurdist, Taylor has been told that they are like a depressed Pee Wee Herman. Taylor transforms lowbrow, banal materials such as junk mail and tabloids into sculpture to subvert and parody our idea of “trash.” This work is often rooted in the concrete, but it also explores the hyperreal and incorporeal trappings of internet culture; both of which create a pervasive, overwhelming sense of emptiness.
Taylor is a studio artist at the McColl Center, and their work has been shown in numerous galleries and art spaces around the southern United States including Redux Contemporary, Charleston; Goodyear Arts, Charlotte; and McColl Center, Charlotte, NC. Taylor’s curatorial project “GARBAGE PERSON,” which was installed at Gallery C3, was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Art Exhibit of 2022.
Taylor has collaborated with brands like Vans, Microsoft Surface, Bojangles, and Almond Breeze, and their works have appeared in Vogue, Oprah Daily, Boston Art Review, and The Jealous Curator among others. Taylor is also a GIPHY Featured Artist and was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Visual Artist of 2022.
Taylor was born in North Carolina and is currently based in Charlotte.
paper mache, aluminum foil, felt, pipe cleaners, price stickers, silicone, paper pulp, and confetti
40x46x26”
2022
STATEMENT
I was raised on garbage: not just a steady diet of hot dogs, Vienna sausages and Spam (the garbage parts of the pig), but a lot of Jerry Springer and The Price is Right. The spectacle and noise of this programming taught me at an early age that poverty is loud. I consumed a lot of tabloids, trash magazines that speculated who killed JonBenet Ramsey, and relished the sordid details of Princess Diana’s bloody death. These magazines had a fetish for deterioration (and of course the occasional alien abduction or Wolf Boy). Little did I know, as I was drinking dollar store soda and listening to Barker’s contestants scream out bids on washing machines, my family was experiencing a decay of our own. Our house was literally falling apart, sinking further into the ground every time it rained. In secret, my grandmother hunched in the basement, stacking heaps of newspaper and tabloids to absorb the water and brace the foundation of our home. She was keeping our white trash family afloat on a mound of molded paper pulp, slimy pink with mildew and smeared with Priscilla Presley.
I’m a Garbage Person, embracing “trash” as both subject and material, deconstructing ideas of high and low culture through my approach to craft. Hooked on nostalgia, I scour eBay for tabloids from my childhood (1990s-2000s) and bedazzle them with beds and sequins reminiscent of my grandmother’s jar of loose embroidery embellishments. With the tabloids I intend to illuminate the proliferation of violence as spectacle and entertainment that fetishizes trauma. We are complicit in this system (as Mike Kelley would have us Pay For Your Pleasure) and we don’t just consume violence; we also violently consume, from Monica Lewinsky to Amber Heard. My cannibalistic consumption of others has been not only encouraged by surrogate father figures like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, but commodified in the attention economy. Herein lies my obsession with papier-mâché (French for “chewed paper”). My sculptures of severed heads, Thanksgiving dinner, and Buzzfeed quizzes are specifically composed of Black Friday coupons, unsolicited loan offers to decrease my debt, and credit card statements that show how deeply my possessions have possessed me. I have been unable to exorcise the poltergeist of poverty that has haunted me since childhood, its grip empowered by push notifications and phantom vibration syndrome. I’m not really exploring supernatural horror, but rather material horror, the idea that beneath everything there is no aura, no soul; only emptiness.
BIO
Taylor Lee Nicholson (b. 1990, they/them) is a genderqueer multidisciplinary artist and curator who loves to mix kitsch and the grotesque in order to dissect the relationship between identity and consumer culture in late stage capitalism. As an Absurdist, Taylor has been told that they are like a depressed Pee Wee Herman. Taylor transforms lowbrow, banal materials such as junk mail and tabloids into sculpture to subvert and parody our idea of “trash.” This work is often rooted in the concrete, but it also explores the hyperreal and incorporeal trappings of internet culture; both of which create a pervasive, overwhelming sense of emptiness.
Taylor is a studio artist at the McColl Center, and their work has been shown in numerous galleries and art spaces around the southern United States including Redux Contemporary, Charleston; Goodyear Arts, Charlotte; and McColl Center, Charlotte, NC. Taylor’s curatorial project “GARBAGE PERSON,” which was installed at Gallery C3, was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Art Exhibit of 2022.
Taylor has collaborated with brands like Vans, Microsoft Surface, Bojangles, and Almond Breeze, and their works have appeared in Vogue, Oprah Daily, Boston Art Review, and The Jealous Curator among others. Taylor is also a GIPHY Featured Artist and was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Visual Artist of 2022.
Taylor was born in North Carolina and is currently based in Charlotte.
paper mache, aluminum foil, felt, pipe cleaners, price stickers, silicone, paper pulp, and confetti
40x46x26”
2022
STATEMENT
I was raised on garbage: not just a steady diet of hot dogs, Vienna sausages and Spam (the garbage parts of the pig), but a lot of Jerry Springer and The Price is Right. The spectacle and noise of this programming taught me at an early age that poverty is loud. I consumed a lot of tabloids, trash magazines that speculated who killed JonBenet Ramsey, and relished the sordid details of Princess Diana’s bloody death. These magazines had a fetish for deterioration (and of course the occasional alien abduction or Wolf Boy). Little did I know, as I was drinking dollar store soda and listening to Barker’s contestants scream out bids on washing machines, my family was experiencing a decay of our own. Our house was literally falling apart, sinking further into the ground every time it rained. In secret, my grandmother hunched in the basement, stacking heaps of newspaper and tabloids to absorb the water and brace the foundation of our home. She was keeping our white trash family afloat on a mound of molded paper pulp, slimy pink with mildew and smeared with Priscilla Presley.
I’m a Garbage Person, embracing “trash” as both subject and material, deconstructing ideas of high and low culture through my approach to craft. Hooked on nostalgia, I scour eBay for tabloids from my childhood (1990s-2000s) and bedazzle them with beds and sequins reminiscent of my grandmother’s jar of loose embroidery embellishments. With the tabloids I intend to illuminate the proliferation of violence as spectacle and entertainment that fetishizes trauma. We are complicit in this system (as Mike Kelley would have us Pay For Your Pleasure) and we don’t just consume violence; we also violently consume, from Monica Lewinsky to Amber Heard. My cannibalistic consumption of others has been not only encouraged by surrogate father figures like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, but commodified in the attention economy. Herein lies my obsession with papier-mâché (French for “chewed paper”). My sculptures of severed heads, Thanksgiving dinner, and Buzzfeed quizzes are specifically composed of Black Friday coupons, unsolicited loan offers to decrease my debt, and credit card statements that show how deeply my possessions have possessed me. I have been unable to exorcise the poltergeist of poverty that has haunted me since childhood, its grip empowered by push notifications and phantom vibration syndrome. I’m not really exploring supernatural horror, but rather material horror, the idea that beneath everything there is no aura, no soul; only emptiness.
BIO
Taylor Lee Nicholson (b. 1990, they/them) is a genderqueer multidisciplinary artist and curator who loves to mix kitsch and the grotesque in order to dissect the relationship between identity and consumer culture in late stage capitalism. As an Absurdist, Taylor has been told that they are like a depressed Pee Wee Herman. Taylor transforms lowbrow, banal materials such as junk mail and tabloids into sculpture to subvert and parody our idea of “trash.” This work is often rooted in the concrete, but it also explores the hyperreal and incorporeal trappings of internet culture; both of which create a pervasive, overwhelming sense of emptiness.
Taylor is a studio artist at the McColl Center, and their work has been shown in numerous galleries and art spaces around the southern United States including Redux Contemporary, Charleston; Goodyear Arts, Charlotte; and McColl Center, Charlotte, NC. Taylor’s curatorial project “GARBAGE PERSON,” which was installed at Gallery C3, was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Art Exhibit of 2022.
Taylor has collaborated with brands like Vans, Microsoft Surface, Bojangles, and Almond Breeze, and their works have appeared in Vogue, Oprah Daily, Boston Art Review, and The Jealous Curator among others. Taylor is also a GIPHY Featured Artist and was nominated for Queen City Nerve’s Best Visual Artist of 2022.
Taylor was born in North Carolina and is currently based in Charlotte.