Kymia Nawabi

Artist Bio

Born: San Diego, California
Lives: Brooklyn, New York

Kymia Nawabi (b. 1980), a first generation Iranian-American, is a multi-disciplinary artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture and stop-motion animation. Nawabi received her BFA from ECU and her MFA from the University of Florida.

Artist Statement

Beverages contaminated with hundreds of needles, shitting out once bitten finger-nails to hammer into floor boards, emperors hovering above possessing multiples of sensory organs and raging pools of piss uncontrollably leaving the body that create the land on which Nincompoop lives are all just a few examples of what my mythology entails. My mythology of “The Nincompoop and The Superior Super Senses Stalkers” is the visual translation of my biography concerning my battle with Social Anxiety Disorder, initially stemming from existing within a bicultural world, as I am a first generation Iranian-American.

Surviving thus far as the “other,” and becoming somewhat of an ethologist of my own experiences, the pieces portray the psychogenesis of the Nincompoop and, specifically, her human abject experience. Sensations and delusions from societal interactions at different stages of infancy, child, teen and adulthood all create my cast of characters quarks and downfalls, as well as the panorama. The body has been turned inside out and what were once mystic phantoms has now become the make-up of the landscape and its operations.

Paradigms of normality within commonplace reality are broken, as the viewer is presented with the monstrous hybrid of an adult-infant beast, “Nincompoop,” that resides within her own fantastical realities. Nincompoop perpetually has no control over her bodily functions because of her nervousness which puts her organs in overdrive. Pools of piss, pus, sweat, tears, vaginal secretions, and mystery fluids spray and leak out of her baby clothes that double as negligees. The Nincompoop’s everlasting fears and paranoia of the enemy prove there being little or no evidence of mental development, therefore all stages of growth are evident simultaneously. The woman-child’s nemeses, the “Superior Super Senses Stalkers,” stalk and harass her with their super anthropomorphized bodies. These bullies have the capability to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel Nincompoop from any distance, and stop at nothing to remind her of her inferiority and animal ness. Once the situation is carefully examined, the viewer slowly recognizes that both sides are one and the same and are just as raw and zoic as the other.

With every scenario I introduce another cast of psychic doppelgangers, scabbing together their personalities from a curious stock of psychoanalytic readings, childhood humiliations, and self-deprecating humor. Through my allegory of human behavior the viewer is given another realm of reality through my perceptions of what is irrefutable that is often felt but not seen. The works are initially understood as playful and humorous, but after close observation they reveal true terror. Thus, through the lens of my own experience, I direct the viewers’ visions to the complex, deep-level, make-up of who we are, and make us dwell on the abject nature of being human.  (Culturehall)

Kymia Nawabi’s Website

Kymia Nawabi on Culturehall