What's up with wellness?

Artist, Nicola Singh asks, 'what's up with wellness?' and offers a somatic account of how sound, listening and breath feature in personal moments of grief, trauma and healing.

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ABOUT NICOLA

Nicola is a multi-disciplinary artist, researcher and pedagogue based between the UK and India. 

Her work is rooted in contemporary performance art. Her research interests are voice, sound and song as cultural signifiers, as tools for spiritual practice and as a means of interrogating language. She work's across sonic traditions, with improvisation techniques and via different modes of listening. She is interested in trans-national techniques of mantra and meditation, and how language, sound and repetition are used as transcendental vehicles in these practices. She also uses mantra-like repetition and improvisation to demonstrate the mutability and difficultly of language. 

Nicola integrates her expanded vocal technique with the influence of Yogic breath practices and classical North Indian vocal music. She is currently training in Dhrupad with Pandit Uday Bhawalkar. 

She also experiments with modes of listening and somatic practice in performance, pedagogic and social justice settings. Most recently, using Yoga Nidra as a tool to support global majority activists in connecting to ancestral wisdoms. 

She uses prop and costume to play with the aesthetics of sound, as well as exploring the physicality of the ‘improvising body’ – testing out embodied states as performative devices. Experiments include weight training and ritual fasting as a precursor to vocal improvisation. 

She also makes speculative and post-performance works on paper. 

Recent teaching posts include Senior Lecturer in Art Theory and Practice at Manchester Metropolitan University (2021 - 2024) and Teaching Fellow, Leeds University (2019 - 2021). She holds a practice-led PhD entitled 'On the thesis-by-performance: a feminist research method for the practice-led PhD' from Northumbria University, Newcastle (2017).

• More information: https://www.nicolasingh.co.uk

ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH FOR ARTISTS

Now in its fourth year, this season focuses on artist wellbeing. We approach ‘mental health’ in its broadest sense, exploring the systemic, individual, and intersectional challenges that impact artists’ lives. Together, we’ll consider how to address these issues as a community.

With a series of talks and Q&As featuring artists, curators, and writers, this programme is FREE to join. 

📹 Are you unable to join live? That's OK! 

• The replay will be posted in the Axis Members Community after the event concludes.
• Shortly after, our Knowledge Base will have an edited version of the replay for you to watch (or rewatch) in your own time.
• Joining live means you’ll get to ask your questions.