NICKOLE KLAROU

As a daughter of two Ivorian immigrants, Nickole Klarou grew up in Massachusetts between two conflicting worlds: her vibrant, rhythmic sphere of Côte d’Ivoire, and the quiet structured, and monochromatic New England suburbia. This duality would later become a foundation of her artistry. As a self taught visual artist, Nickole began drawing with pencil from the age of three. She later attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied film and further developed her voice as an artist. Within her filmmaking, she extracts her love for dark lighting, color, to visually translate the subconscious mind, and evoke emotion, and mood. Her family’s journey from Côte d’Ivoire to the American Northeast in the late 1990s as well as growing up as one of the few Black girls of African descent in her small town, shaped her lens of the world that translated into her artistry. With the social landscape of the early 2000s encompassing colorism, featurism, and hair texturism, as a child, Nickole encountered many instances of these beauty hierarchies both personally and in the media. These messages were absorbed into her psyche, and deeply programmed her mind for many years,  however, she deconstructed and unlearned these narratives surrounding beauty that she once internalized. Nickole uses her large scale charcoal portraits along with symbolic embellishments such as rhinestones or glitter to reclaim black and the features associated with African ancestry as beautiful, feminine, and desirable.

In July of 2014, Nickole stepped foot in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire for the first time with her father and her two older sisters. She quickly fell in love and immersed herself into her Ivorian culture which she once felt shame for. Shame and embarrassment turned to deep cultural pride, and admiration which would become the start of her charcoal portraits. In 2016 as a junior in high school, she began a concentration that centered around using charcoal pencil to draw dark skin. Her first ever subject was Ivorian model Adonis Bosso, who would become an emblem of her Ivorian pride. Nickole often recounts how her fellow peers constantly expressed how “afraid” they were of using charcoal, and she observed how they were afraid of exploring shadows and dark tones. Here was the genesis of her deeply seeking truth, and exploring dark places, artistically speaking as well as psychologically.

A significant source of inspiration for her work are her summer memories of her father telling her and her siblings not to go “too far” out into the ocean, or else “they won’t find you”. To Nickole, the ocean became a motif for the human subconscious mind, as it is a dark, unexplored zone. She strives for viewers to confront their own subconscious mind and the negative beliefs that were formed regarding dark skin, White supremacy, femininity, and womanhood. Through her dark, and vast charcoal portraits, Nickole embraces the dark, the unseen, the unsaid, and the disregarded. She captures her subjects as they truly are, using charcoal, a messy medium that reveals a messy inner world. Through direct eye contact and transfixing black hues with scintillating highlights, her subjects serve as a mirror of the viewer’s subconscious mind, and force them to confront their subconscious colorist beliefs surrounding dark skin, and appreciate dark skin. With Nickole’s charcoal portraits, she displays that dark skin is desirable, beautiful and a beauty standard. 

Nickole continues to search for truth, and rawness in hopes of bringing the dark to light to reshape notions surrounding skin color, and black femininity.