Tya Nelson, or “6,” is a Brooklyn-based photographer and visual artist. Periodically performative and or staged, Nelson allows self-portraiture to examine themes of belonging, safety, and isolation.
Incorporating found artifacts, childhood mementos, and redacted medical files, Nelson’s work explores the ways in which the intention of a “safe space” evolves nearly autonomously, adapting to the people, and the needs of the people, who reside within it.
Through major transitions within the family home, Nelson’s use of self-identity, coupled with lived experience, serves as a cathartic key anchor to the images she produces.
With both an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach, her work often incorporates varied mediums, such as mixed-media works on paper and canvas, as well as video installations depicting facets of everyday Black life. Engaging with dialogues centering on gender dysphoria and euphoria, desire, and trauma, her most recent project, “until we’re not, or until i am no longer”, navigates the double consciousness of being both Black and trans, exploring personal and communal narratives of transformation and being seen. Nelson’s penchant for multiple mediums remains present in her ongoing spice-work practice, utilizing natural pigments such as ground coffee, turmeric, and spirulina. She incorporates play and early lessons learned in her grandmother's kitchen to explore cultural memory alongside sensory and material transformation.
Influenced by artists such as Carrie Mae Weems, Shala Miller and Benny Andrew, Nelson’s work bridges personal liberation with collective resilience and quiet curiosity, using art to unpack and challenge cultural narratives through lived experience.
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