Nina Criswell is a Lithuanian-American oil painter from California currently based in Berlin with a background in architecture and computer science. In her practice, she explores the invisible forces shaping the embodied experience. Criswell examines self-censorship of the body and the mechanisms that suppress pleasure and desire in the public space. Combining found and personal photographs, the painting process is a balancing act where Criswell lets these forms merge, unveiling the latent potential for intimacy and violence in the body on both individual and collective levels. By combining sensual bodily forms with images of crowds or the environments designed to serve them, privacy becomes a concern; what happens when we expose the intimacies of the body in the public space? The overlapping imagery makes a detective of the viewer, tasked with untangling the fractured forms, speaking to how the body is nullified to conform to the masses and how these systems can be dismantled.
