Art Brussels

Friday 24 April
3 – 3:50 PM at the Tribune

Artist talk with Nicola Tyson (artist, Nino Mier) in conversation with Felix Choong (curator, Hayward Gallery) 

On the occasion of the artist’s solo booth with Nino Mier Gallery, this talk examines the role of cartoon figuration as a metaphor for contemporary bodily experience in Nicola Tyson’s artistic practice. The discussion explores how digital saturation and societal pressures force the human form and psyche to bend, adapt, and dissolve. Through an analysis of the cartoon’s penchant for humour and inherent malleability—in its capacity for extreme violence, transformation, and appetite—we discuss the collapsing boundary between representation and reality. 

About the Speakers:   

Nicola Tyson
Nicola Tyson (b. 1960) is a British artist living and working in New York. Primarily known as a painter, Tyson has also worked in sculpture, photography, and the written word. She ran Trial BALLOON, a women-only, lesbian-focused NYC project space in the early 90s. Dead Letter Men, her collection of satirical letters, was published in 2013, and her unique archive of color photos, Bowie Nights at Billy’s Club, London, 1978, documenting the London club scene of the late 70s has been the subject of shows in both London and New York. Tyson’s exhibition of new drawings, NEED, is on view at Petzel, NY through April 25. Her most recent exhibition of paintings, I am a teapot, was on view at Petzel in January 2025. Her work is included in museum collections such as MoMA, SFMOMA, and the Tate Modern. She is represented by Petzel Gallery (NYC), Sadie Coles HQ (London), and Nino Mier (Brussels)

Felix Choong 
Felix Choong is a London-based curator and has been part of the curatorial team at the Hayward Gallery since 2024. He is alumnus of the inaugural New Curators, an initiative led by Mark Godfrey and Kerryn Greenberg, co-curating Firelei Báez’s first UK institutional solo show at South London Gallery in 2023. He is also the editor of Nice Outfit, an exhibition catalogue and journal. The itinerant publication connects exhibition-making to other disciplines by inviting writers of varying disciplines to respond to the exhibition themes in any way they see fit.