Collections Highlights

2024.03.01, I regret nothing by Nia Musiba

No matter how you may feel about messaging today, Nia Musiba’s artwork will remind you about goodness: goodness in loving yourself, goodness in being with your friends and neighbors, goodness in being playful and having fun.   

As a multi-disciplinary artist and a Graphic Design major based in Portland, Nia’s CV is nothing short of spectacular.  Musiba has delivered campaigns with commercial giants such as ADIDAS and Nike, as well as exhibited with galleries such as One Grand Gallery, Littman & White, and Paladar Studio, amongst many other collaborations.  

While championing artists who are able to successfully integrate business and art is vital, it’s Nia’s placemaking in contemporary art that must be celebrated.  In an interview with Kristin Solomon (Blackfish Gallery, January 2022), Nia said, “I do a lot of work with black and white figures because I’m half black, I’m half Tanzanian, and half white.  Becoming an adult has meant a lot… exploring that identity and also being OK with that identity, and loving and accepting all of those parts of myself.”

This exploration of self, and all of the work it takes for one to truly arrive at the foot of the mirror and say “I love you,” can be felt in Nia’s work. Nia’s approach to figural depiction shows rotund, moving shapes rooted in her design background. In her newest collection of works on paper, Musiba investigates cycles, completion, repetition, symbols, patterns, freedom, structure, discipline (and lack thereof) coming undone and then coming together again. Viewers can step up to I regret nothing and see the meditative pencil work of the artist on raw-edged paper. She considers the balance of it all through “spaces [or planes] that are warm, bright, and flexible, which can promote a sense of safety and calm.”  We can see this space as an ode to the strength it takes to regret nothing. Musiba’s visual articulation and use of bold blues may provide a place for those of us trying to find one.

The Arts Council of Lake Oswego is very excited to feature Nia Musiba’s artwork, I regret nothing, from the exhibition “Unseasonably Warm” with One Grand Gallery, in the City of Lake Oswego’s Permanent Indoor Collection. Musiba’s piece, I regret nothing, can be found near the newspaper section on the first floor in the Public Library in Lake Oswego, where viewers may absorb the goodness of Nia’s messaging.    

-Norah Crean