Vernita E Nemec AKA N’Cognita

Vernita Nemec AKA Vernita N’Cognita’s first installation artworks in the mid-70’s were the fragments and detritus of her artmaking, transferred from the walls of her studio to the gallery. She continues creating installations both as site-specific works and as backdrops for performance artworks. Mixed media collages & photographs are also within her oeuvre.

A sense of autobiography has permeated all of Nemec’s art since her first feminist performance in 1978, during which she swept a street corner in SoHo, where she still lives and works. Her first official performance was at the Guggenheim Museum in Meredith Monk’s Juice. Since then, she has performed her own work at the Women’s Building in Los Angeles, La Mama, Franklin Furnace and other venues including a Guerrilla Performance at the Pompidou in Paris.

The artist added “N’Cognita” to her name to honor lesser-known artists. She has been active as a visual/performance artist and curator since the late 1960’s, when she co-curated X-12, the first feminist art show of the period. The artist has worked with Artworkers Coalition (AWC), Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), Artists Meeting for Cultural Change and later, PADD (Political Art Documentation Distribution) and has served on the Board of Heresies, a feminist publication.

During the 90’s, Nemec served as Director of Artists Talk On Art, interviewing art world luminaries, and as an independent curator at Henry Street Settlement for the Arts. Until 2006, she was the Director of Viridian Artists, a contemporary art gallery in Chelsea. She is now on the Board of Directors of the feminist gallery SoHo 20.

Nemec completed her BFA cum laude at Ohio University and received an NDEA Grant for her MA from New York University. Since, she has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, Artists Space, Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, The Puffin Foundation, among others. The artist has presented her visual and performance art in the U.S., Mexico, Hungary, Germany, Japan, Ireland and France.

Autobiography & what it is to be a female is a constant thread, whether I am performing a word & movement piece (AKA performance art) or creating a physical artwork.

My artmaking is a way of translating my thoughts, fears and fantasies into installations, performances, photographs, collages and poetry. With paper, torn edges, found objects and images, I seek to create a visual autobiography with my art. Addressing issues of relationship, loss and self-actualization (AKA Feminism) my fragmented imagery, though seemingly disconnected, is imbued with complexities and nuances that I feel reflect our 21st century lives.

In 1997 I wrote: “My art is about anger, pain, pleasure, hopes, regrets, mistakes, love, hate, freedom, recycling, adolescence, childhood, dolls, aging, happiness, fantasies, dread, fear, beauty, nature, politics, power, destruction, distraction, sexuality, sexism, feminism, spirituality, illness, healing, drugs, envy, science, art, history, memories, dreams, nightmares, hopelessness, confusion, play, daddy, mommy, secrets, lies, life, death, detritus, innuendo, art making and chance.”

My art is about all that still, regardless of what media I use.

In the late 70’s & early 80’s, I tackled adolescent memories and wanting better love; feminism, artmaking and the conflicts therein. In the nineties I struggled with issues of identity and purpose and now in the twenty-first century, I have added the dilemma of aging.

A would-be dancer, singer and actor, I put all that, along with my poetic ambitions, into my performance art. My visual artworks, have included series of Haiku Collages, Body Prints, Dick Drawings & The Endless Junkmail Scroll to name a few. I save everything, in case I can later turn it into art. My studio, where I have lived & worked since 1972, is filled with the detritus of my life, both frustrating & inspiring me.

In 1969, as I began my New York City art career, I learned firsthand the difficultly of exhibiting art when one is of the female gender. I was fortunate to find Art Workers’ Coalition (AWC) and Women Artists in Revolution (WAR). The meetings I attended and the artists I met gave me the courage to organize with a friend the first Feminist Exhibition (X-12, 12 Women Artists) of that time. For a girl from Ohio, it was a daring act, but one that proved to be a gesture of power and evidence for me, demonstrating that through our actions, we often determine our the courses of our lives.