Nekisha Durrett
Counter Spaces: The Shape of Memory and Absence
Nekisha Durrett employs public art and social practice to explore how typography, monument, and place create encounters with histories often left unseen. Through deep research and material investigation, she traces the presence of the past in the present, surfacing stories that are often overlooked or uncelebrated.
About Nekisha Durrett
Nekisha Durrett is a Washington, DC-based artist whose work brings hidden and overlooked histories into public view. Grounded in deep research and material exploration, her multidisciplinary practice spans public art, installation, sculpture, painting, and social practice. Durrett is especially drawn to stories of Black life, labor, and imagination that have been forgotten or intentionally erased, creating spaces that hold both remembrance and possibility.
Her work often begins with fragments – an archival image, a personal story, a neglected site – and evolves into layered forms that invite reflection, ritual, and collective memory. Through site-specific installations and collaborative processes, Durrett makes room for voices long silenced and for futures not yet written.
Durrett’s permanent public artworks are found at Arlington Arts in Virginia, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Miami Dade County, the Phillips Collection and MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, DC, the City of West Palm Beach, and Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. In 2026, her large-scale, community-driven commission Hem of Heaven will be unveiled at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and an MFA from the University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design.
