About

Niceli Portugal is a Multidisciplinary artist and educator hailing from Arequipa in the Peruvian Andes, now based in New York City. In her work she approaches topics related to immigration and sustainability, as a result of growing up around the Andean Cosmovision, a unique view driven by mutual nurture and interconnectedness between humans and nature. Niceli has created educational programs for the Guggenheim Museum, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, Queens Museum, and American Folk Art Museum. Her work has been shown at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Human Impacts Institute and Bronx Art Space. Niceli is the Director of Escuelita en Casa, an international initiative in response to the pandemic that connects educators and provides free tutoring and art classes to families in the US and Latin America.

Artist Statement :

Rooted in Andean Cosmovision and shaped by my experience as an immigrant, I create participatory sculptures, installations, and social practice projects that explore the interconnectedness of humans, nature, and collective memory. By giving voice and human attributes to mountains, water, and other elements of the natural world, my work challenges extractive ways of thinking and invites relationships grounded in reciprocity and care.

This vision informs my exploration of colonialism, migration, and sustainability. I work with reclaimed and discarded materials, including construction-site debris, as acts of raw transformation that speak to precarity and resilience. I collaborate with immigrant communities to creatively explore the challenges of climate change in New York City. As an educator, I cultivate multicultural, multilingual, and intergenerational spaces where art becomes our mother language for collective learning and imagining more just and sustainable futures.

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