"In the last few years my practice has increasingly shifted towards one that seeks to combine mainly performance, painting and time based media installation, in order to discuss the creation of psychological, cultural and political memory, as well as processes of social othering, ex- and inclusion.
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Looking at the history of my home country, the Philippines, and comparing it to the increasingly neo-liberal, xenophobic and right wing tendencies I have encountered while growing up in Europe, I came to realize new examples for mainly two things: How many national government systems have radically exploitative, alienating and marginalizing agendas and how interconnected national histories and issues in political power dynamics are on a global level.

The use of absurdist aesthetics, as well as a theoretical focus on writings on postcolonial issues, the uncanny, the monstrous and post-humanism, have helped me to find a visual language to contemplate my artistic ideas on those matters. Employing non-linear dialogue styles, theatrical disguise, masks and  ambiguous physical shapes, throughout my multidisciplinary practice, I wish to irritate and subvert established power relations and conventions within my heteronormative western surrounding and positively familiarize it with previously othered subjects.
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Furthermore looking at the way my environment produces, replicates and negotiates racial or sexual representations, I started to look at the history of alternative spacessuch as drag queen houses, secret LGBTI+ meeting spots, as well as spaces where POC bodies are exoticized. Investigating into different social,  (sub) cultural, as well as historical directions, I am creating visual narrations that are intended to present the narratives and voices of marginalized subjects to a wider audience.
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In my research stages, I am particularly interested in the way secret visual cues and scene codes enable a complex and rich communication between like-minded people, living in precarious situations, knowing that they are exposed to constant vulnerability and threat.
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Having previously found myself in that position too, I have always been interested in finding ways to turn somebody’s role of a victim, that is for example suffering from homophobia, racism, political persecution or exclusion, into one that enables an individual to have impactful agency and visibility in contemporary society.
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Especially within my performative works, I have actively taken advantage of the personal histories and cultural experiences of fellow performers and collaborators, by constructing multi-perspective dialogues, in order to extend possibleinterpretations, and to re-negotiate and add to existing queer, POC and immigrant narratives and history.
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My artistic practice is therefore generally concerned with a juxtaposition and interweaving of historical events and recent global developments, the familiar and the strange; the personal and the universal."
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Nicholas (DE, *1990, Angeles City, Philippines) holds an MFA from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (DE). He has previously studied at the Kunstakademie Münster (DE), the School of Arts and Cultures in Newcastle (UK) as well as British, American and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Münster (DE). His paintings, videos and performances, frequently made in collaboration with Polish artist Mikołaj Sobczak, negotiate processes of memory formation, as well as the in- and exclusion of subjects from history writing.
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His works were recently exhibited at signs and symbols (New York, US), Capitain Petzel (Berlin, DE), Shoot the Lobster (New York, US), Kunsthal Aarhus (Aarhus, DK), Andersen’s Contemporary (Copenhagen, DK), Museum Ludwig (Cologne, DE), K21 Museum Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, DE), fffriedrich (Frankfurt am Main, DE), Tramway (Glasgow, UK), Kunstraum (London, UK), Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf, DE), Dortmunder Kunstverein (Dortmund, DE), PS120 Berlin (Berlin, DE), Exo Exo at David Giroire (Paris, FR), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw, PL) and BOZAR (Brussels, BE).