“In my early teens, my mother didn’t allow me to wear makeup. Her way of negotiating that was to allow me to wear nail polish. The nail polish was more than an accessory, it was a creative outlet and it became an expression of my identity. In 2002 when I realized that I was still in possession of a bottle of nail polish that I had since I was 15 years old, I started to think about the ways in which women use cosmetics as a means of personal codification. I originally made paintings in which I used and arranged the nail polish colors into a map legend of sorts and called it ‘The Sensation Code’. The code would imply further possible narrative directions in the work. I was plaing with language, with the viewer’s expectation for familiar canons – Awai spreads her fingers wide open looking at her transparent flesh/pinky colored polished nails – and sometimes a nail polish name would start off an idea for a work or, when seeing a name on a bottle, one of the ideas that I am working on would come to mind and it would become part of it.”
Sasha Dees in conversation with Trini-American Nicole Awai.
