statement
I develop objects, environments, and images that unsettle the dynamics of visibility, where the act of looking loses neutrality. My work attends to the ways bodies and landscapes become entangled in circuits of desire, consumption, and power, particularly within the tropics that shape my own history. I often reference marine ecologies, most recently bioluminescent organisms, and their strategies of evasion and concealment, through hypervisibility. With this work, I recast the gaze as a contested site, one that reveals both its predatorial forces and proliferating agencies. Southern Florida and its waterways remain a central and sustaining force in my practice.
biography
Emily Velez Nelms (she/her) is a visual artist and educator born and raised in southern Florida. Her work analyzes the nature of looking and being seen, engaging with questions of desire, surveillance, and power as they structure relations between body, land, and infrastructure. Drawing on archival formation, marine ecologies, and theories of racial formation, her practice foregrounds the entanglement of visibility and spatial production in tropical and touristic geographies.
Her MED thesis at the Yale School of Architecture, Domestic Exotic, examined how cultural tourism has shaped the infrastructural development of southern Florida alongside the competing forces of Native sovereignty, American entertainment, and institutional collecting practices.
She has participated in residencies at the International Sculpture Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, MASS MoCA, Fountainhead Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Her first museum solo exhibition, The Resonance of Things Unseen, was presented at the Yale Peabody Museum (April–November 2024).
Velez Nelms holds a BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design (2013), an MFA in Sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles (2019), and an MED from the Yale School of Architecture (2024), with additional studies in architecture at the University of Miami. She currently serves on the board of the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD). From 2022–2024 she was the graduate coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America and has taught in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the University of Hartford.
Contact: velez.nelms@gmail.com
2024 MED, Yale School of Architecture, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 23/24 Whitney Independent Study Program, Whitney Museum, New York, New York 2019 MFA, Sculpture, University of California, Los Angeles 2013BFA, Painting, Savannah College of Art & Design, Savannah, Georgia, Magna Cum Laude Board Member, Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, & Design, ISAPD
honors and residencies
2025 Fountainhead Arts, Artist-in-Residence, Miami, Florida 2023 MASS MoCA, Artist-in-Residence, North Adams, Massachusetts 2023 Yale Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, Studio Fellow, New Haven, Connecticut2019Interdisciplinary Art & Theory Program, New York, New York 2018Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine 26/17International Sculpture Center, MANA Contemporary, Jersey City2015RESPIRO Artist Residency, Castel del Piano, Italy 2014National Association of Women Artists, Honorable Artist Award, New York
exhibitions
solo
2024The Resonance of Things Unseen, Yale Peabody Museum2019Toward A Referendum on Performativity, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California
group
2024“[HYPERTEXT](HYPERLINK)”, ISOVIST Gallery, Yale CCAM, New Haven, CT2024Land Secrets & Sympoiesis, The Skowhegan Alumni Alliance, Microscope Gallery, New York, New York2024At Odds With, Whitney ISP Culminating Exhibition, Westbeth Gallery, New York, New York20228 x 5, Artists Against Mass Incarceration Calling for Judicial Reform, Art At A Time Like This, Miami2022Figural Realism, Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, New York 2022Unmasked, the World Before Us, Center for Collaborative Arts & Media, New Haven, Connecticut 2022Sombremesa, Yale School of Architecture Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut 2021Private Practices, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Los Angeles, California2021Diaspora, Coral Springs Museum of Art, Coral Springs, Florida 2020ID: Formations of the Self, City University of New York, New York, New York2019Toward A Referendum on Performativity, New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California 2018That’s What She Said, Pennsylvania State University, Centre County, Pennsylvania 2018Orientation, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, New York 2018Selections from the Permanent Collection, MANA Contemporary, Chicago, Illinois 2017Her:Here, Duo exhibition, MANA Contemporary, Jersey City, New Jerse2017Debtfair (participating artist), a project of Occupy Museums, Whitney Biennial 2017, NY2017On the Edge, Trenton Museum, Trenton, New Jersey 2017The Colored Museum, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey 2016Small Sculpture Show, International Sculpture Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2016Refined Irreverence : Carolina Herrera, SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion and Film, Atlanta, Georgia 2016Enlightmotive, Kajo Collection, Cologne, Germany 2015No Exhibitions Allowed, Kajo Collection, Amsterdam, Netherlands2015Bread and Lights, Cameron Art Museum, Wilmington, North Carolina2015I Breathe, Poggio Narchini, Castel del Piano, Italy2015Thirty Under 30, Acme Art Studios, Wilmington, North Carolina 2014Liquid Identities, Cartasia Biennale D’Arte, Lucca, Italy 2014Jamais Vu, SCAD DeFine Art dinner, Savannah, Georgia 2014Small Works, National Association of Women’s Arts, New York, New York 2013Solo Exhibition Jamais Vu, Savannah, Georgia 2013Wide Open Four, Brooklyn, New York 2012Vernissage, La Galerie Pfriem, Lacoste, France
academic
22/24Graduate Coordinator for YGSNA, Yale Group for the Study of Native America
Weekly newsletter. Round table organization. Assists in the management of events for interdisciplinary working groups interested in topics relating to Native America. Faculty Coordinator, Ned Blackhawk.
Co-organizer YGSNA Spring 2024 Conference, Global History of Indigenous Thought
Lecturer, University of Hartford
Fall 2023Native American Cultures: Indigenous Futures, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Hartford, CT
Teaching Fellowships, University of California Los Angeles
2019Advanced Sculpture, Professor Hirsch Perlman
2018Advanced Sculpture, Manifestos and Declarations, Professor Rodney McMillian
2018Cultural Seminar, The Seventies, Professor Russell Ferguson
museum studies
2023Exhibition Engagement Assistant, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut
2015Curatorial Internship, Peréz Art Museum Miami, Miami, Florida
2014Gallery Assistant, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, New York
additional lectures / programming
2025Softening the Grid, Studio Conversation for ISAPD and the Center for Architecture, Archtober
2024Artist Conversation, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, Connecticut2023Dispossession, Tourism, and Desire, Indigenous Architecture Days, The Equinox House: Enter the Past + Engage the Future, Davies Toews Architecture, New York, New York2023Domestic Exotic / Dispossession and Desire in South Florida 20th c. Tourism, McNickle Center for American Indian & Indigenous Studies, The Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois
2021Domestic Exotic (Developments), Department of Art History, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 2021Glaring Back, Economies of Care, Los Angeles, California, Curated by Aden Solway with Virtual Care Lab, NAVEL.LA. 2021Domestic Exotic, University of Miami Graduate Symposia Presenter
2017Guest Artist Lecturer, at Keystone College, La Plume, Pennsylvania 2017Panel Discussion, at MANA Contemporary for Her:Here, Jersey City, New Jersey