Nina Osoria Ahmadi

About Artists Events Installation Views

Bodies of Water

These selected works from the Bodies of Water series aims to visualize what the body holds and how it can be held. By transforming their body into abstract landscapes, they explore how their body exists at in-betweens not only geographically, but literally and physically as a gender-nonconforming person. This series draws from mythologies of deities and woman-goddesses like Yemaya, Oshun, and the ocean itself as mother, woman, healer, and bearer of life that come from their traditional Cuban spiritual practices. 

The water will always hold you, regardless of your place in life or point in transition.

To the river / I am not lost, 2020 

To the river

I am still.
As if the sky is covered in a blanket of gray,
No blue to reflect.

Sometimes it feels suffocating
Looking up to see flat
white
not Blue not
Sky
Not Sun
but cloud.

A sheet,
Heavy and dense.

Blue feels free,
like breath,
like wind,

limitless

Gray makes the sky low. makes the ocean flat. white water without the warmth of blue wavesGray sky gray blanket gray water
gray air gray people walk by
with gray dogs, gray bikes ride on
gray wheels, gray grass pokes out
from the gray sidewalk.
gray sky.

gray sky.

gray sun.

I am lost in the gray. In dense fog. I feel blue.

..

whisper the ocean I know flows into these rivers
whisper the rain can also fill me. can also bring me peace

the gray whispers the water will always hold you

the water will always hold you

The water will always hold you.

No matter your shape or weight in your chest
if you can let her, she will hold you.

whether she is gray or blue she will fill you.
And so I am full

she will wash you
And so I am clean

and so I am the rain and the sea.

And so I am home.


Nina Osoria Ahmadi (they/them) is a 21-year-old artist, student, and aspiring educator from Miami, Florida. They graduated from Gallatin in December with a concentration in Arts, Education, and Social Justice and minors in Education and Studio Art. Ahmadiā€™s current practice uses self-portraiture to explore the ā€œin-betweensā€ or gray areas of identity, referring to mixed cultural identity, racial identity, matrilineal family lines, gender, and sexual identity through various media including photography, printmaking, and performance.