Nicole Condon-Shih
Hidden Estrus《隐情》
Hidden Estrus is an ongoing research project exploring the facades of fertility in humans and other mammals. During times of fertility, female felines release pheromones, rhesus monkeys’ faces darken, and baboons display exaggerated redness and swelling of the genitalia, known as sexual swellings. Human females, however, conceal ovulation and display limited outward physiological signs that would signal periods of fertility. Without highly explicit markers of ovulation, can other humans detect fertility through invisible biological cues? Supposing the invisible is made visible, the concealed is revealed? What repercussions could this have for human social and sexual interactions?
About the Artist
Nicole Condon-Shih is an American interdisciplinary artist and educator working between the United States and Beijing, China. Her practice intersects art and science and examines the dichotomy between the microscopic versus the macroscopic in thinking about biological systems, and, more recently, cultural and urban networks.
Her work has been shown internationally in Hong Kong at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism & Architecture, in Beijing at the B3 Biennale of the Moving Image, and in the Reverse the Perspective exhibition at the Xiangsi Art Museum in Tianjin, China.
She received her B.F.A. from Cornell University’s School of Architecture, Art, and Planning, M.S. from Syracuse University, and M.F.A. from Hunter College, City University of New York. Nicole Condon-Shih is an Assistant Professor of Art in the Foundation Department at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) and previously spent eight years teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (International Foundation Course) in Beijing, China as the Head of Studio. Her art practice continually informs her teaching, just as teaching is integral to her practice as an artist.