Photo credit: Chris Bacarella
Nykoli Koslow is Pfister Hotel's 12th Artist in Residence
The Pfister Hotel has invited an out and proud transgender artist, Nykoli Koslow as this year’s artist in residence. In this case, the artist’s work is by its very nature specifically and deliberately trans. I recently spoke with Koslow about his trans identity, his art and his vision as the Pfister’s artist in residence.
Asked about his transition, Koslow relates a familiar story. “My trans identity has always been there in the background. Because I grew up in 1990s suburbia where queerness didn’t exist, I didn’t know it was a real thing. I wanted to be a boy but it didn’t seem like a possibility. As I got to know queer people in college, transness was represented as negative and I tried to be another thing. After college I thought about transitioning but again put it on the back burner. But it became something I couldn’t ignore. I’ve been out with friends for a number of years but not as publicly as I am now. It’s been in my art for the last few years”, Koslow explains. Similarly, when I asked about his artist calling, the answer was essentially the same. “It was something I’ve always done but not addressed. Like my transiness, I’ve always been an artist,” he says.
Koslow’s highly abstract imagery externalizes his identity and reflects that state of “transiness.” It is also apparent his mission is to communicate that and the idea of gender fluidity. But, as the artist in residence in a gilded age Milwaukee hotel filled with a classically representative Victorian art collection, how does Koslow intend to negotiate that seemingly jarring juxtaposition?
“I was very surprised the Pfister chose me. For whatever reason I didn’t think I fit into that space. I was scared and intimidated at first but now I’m proud about it—especially thinking about the history and realizing I can exist as I am within it and I’m being given a platform to express that,” he says. “People have to listen. I hope to create a space for people to spend time with my abstractions and ask what it is instead of quickly identifying it. Representation is important. But, it’s important for artists of a minority to communicate in the abstract realm. Giving form to something invisible is only possible when you make it abstract,” Koslow said. In fact, one of his projects intends to interpret and reimagine pieces in the Pfister art collection as his own by bending, twisting and evolving them to create a new artistic experience for the viewer, and, perhaps, discover the inner-queer etymology of certain works.
“I definitely want to normalize the trans and queer experience and be approachable. I’ll be there for a year so the trans sensationalism will fade and I’ll be seen as me. We’re all hiding aspects of ourselves and important to live authentically. If we don’t, we have to wonder if we are real. I want people to see the person behind the trans, to spark conversation and engagement around modern ideologies and to reimagine religion and culture where trans people are center and queerness is normative,” Koslow says.
