Nina Fraser
Lisbon
Multidisciplinary Artist working with collage, painting and sculpture to reflect upon place, memory, and the fragility of constructed reality.
MessageNina Fraser (1984) b. St. Albans, UK, is a multidisciplinary artist who creates artworks that reflect upon a sense of place to shape memory traces into physical form. She uses collage as a primary tool in both her visual artist practice - often site-specific - and to build community through formal and informal learning exchange. She works within or alongside many organisations, as a means to create space for sharing and collaborations.
She holds a Postgraduate Degree in Curating and Commissioning Public Art from HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, and Bachelor's Degree in Textile Art from Winchester College of Arts, University of Southampton (UK). She undertook the residency program at A BASE escola de arte (formally MArt) between 2015-2017, in central Lisbon, where she began exhibiting her work in Portugal. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide and has had several solo exhibitions in Portugal, including: “Deliquesce”, Art Room, Lisbon, (2024); "Home", Espaço Cultural Mercês, Lisbon, (2021); and "TAXIS DERMA", Museum of Natural Science and History, Lisbon, (2019).
Residencies include; “Plant thinking”, Estação Viva, Canelas, Portugal (2023); “Mycelium”, Roccamonfina, Italy (2023); Largo Residências, Lisbon, Portugal (2022-23); and “Body & Place”, Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire, UK (2019). Nina’s collages have been published in magazines and books, including “Collage Care: Transforming Emotions & Life Experiences” edited by Kanyer Art Collection, 2021. Nina’s work is represented in the public and private collections including: Coleção Figueiredo Ribeiro, Portugal; The Doug and Laurie Kanyer Art Collection, USA; Coleção Grupo IMPRESSA, Portugal; Casa das Artes de Tavira, Portugal; Retroavangarda Collection, Poland amongst others.
Since 2008, she has co-created several artistic and community projects, including The Art House Southampton Community Cafe (co-founding director, 2008 - 2014); SUPERSONIC online platform (2020) and Collage Working Club - informal space for learning and sharing collage practice and thinking (2022 - to date). She works as artistic coordinator of Art & Craft Refúgio - a project located at Jardins do Bombarda, Lisbon, which integrates migrants and refugees through the practice of arts and crafts (2022 - to date) and is also a regular facilitator with the neurodiverse community at Loucamente, Montijo (2025). In 2025 she was a participatory artist for LABECO - Cooperative Laboratory for Artistic and Ecological Practices working between Lisbon and Marseille. She is a visiting artist at international schools across Lisbon, and a guest lecturer at A BASE escola de Arte, Lisbon, from 2025-26.
Statement
Drawn to concepts and methods that derive from the fragmented image, my interest lies in combining them with an instinctive ‘brush’ stroke that manipulates the hierarchy of traditionally separate mediums (painting, printmaking, collage). Lately, it is also about the way we make rhizomatic connections and interact with our surroundings. Like fungi that slip through classification systems, the world becomes less of an ordered system, and more of a place of re-exploration. Rather than isolating nature to the symbolic order of structures of thought and polarities, there is an understanding of a perception of the vegetal world as a fundamentally symbiotic system of interrelations between roots, rhizomes and soil.