nicholas b jacobsen
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artist bio

nicholas b jacobsen is a seventh-generation Utah-Mormon, trans-nonbinary settler raised in Nuwu homelands. As a creative historian, culture critic, & visual artist, their work addresses their personal and ancestral connections to the U.S. & Mormon settler-colonial-imperialist project. Through this, they work to disassimilate from the myths of white-supremacy and settler-innocence central to Mormon & U.S. cultures. 
jacobsen completed a Master of Fine Arts degree in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico & a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics from Southern Utah University. They’ve won many awards & have been published, podcasted, exhibited, and collected throughout the U.S. You can see more of their work at nicholasbjacobsen.com, unsettlingmormonism.com and @Unsettling_Mormonism on Instagram.

artist statement

I am an artist and researcher dedicated to unsettling settler-coloniality, being a witness to Whiteness, and mending the human/nature divide in dominant U.S. culture. This work emerges as an entanglement of installation, performance, video, ceramics, sculpture, text, and digital collage. My research is slow, embodied, and place-based, emphasizing the time and attention it takes to develop a lasting, visceral understanding of something. Through my work I want others to come away with an open, ongoing, multisensorial curiosity about themselves and the multiplicitous world that are submerged within.

In the mid-1800's, after repeatedly being forced out of their homes in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, my ancestors migrated across the Great Plains into the Great Basin. They then forced the Indigenous inhabitants between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas off of their ancestral hunting grounds, farming lands, and fishing waters. Over a hundred years later, I was raised near Navajo sandstone cliffs, the Virgin River, and the Pine Valley mountains in Nuwu (Southern Paiute) territory. After leaving Mormonism, this land is where I reformed my spirituality. I am in love with someone else's homeland. 

As I reckon with this personal and ancestral history, I must also reckon with an inherited ideological history. The Book of Mormon is said to be a record of ancient Christians in the Americas and claims that contemporary Indigenous peoples are among the descendants of a people cursed by God. Further, this book promises that when Indigenous peoples accept the Book of Mormon as their own history, they will become a pure/White people. This settler-colonial violence has become central to my work at the intersections of Mormonism, Whiteness, and American-ness.

curriculum vitae


nicholas b jacobsen
[email protected] | nicholasbjacobsen.com | @nicholasbjacobsen

EDUCATION
University of New Mexico
M.F.A. Graduate Student: 2017-2020
Art & Ecology

Southern Utah University
B.F.A in Studio Art: 2009-2012
Ceramics

Dixie State College 
Associate of Science: 2001-2009
RELATED EXPERIENCE
Central New Mexico Community College 
| Albuquerque, NM
Part-time Instructor | 2023-current


ABQ SURJ 
| Albuquerque, NM
Organizer | 2020-Current

Paper Turtle | Albuquerque, NM
Ceramist | 2020-Current

University of New Mexico | Albuquerque, NM
Researcher / Ceramics Instructor | 2019-Current

Surface and Architecture Workshop | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Plasterer and Fabricator | 2016 - 2017

Jun Kaneko Studio | Omaha, Nebraska
Artist’s Assistant | 2012 - 2015

Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts | Maplecrest, NY
Teaching Assistant | Summer 2012

SELECT EXHIBITIONS
2023
Invitational | Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Salt Lake City, UT | TBD

Juried | Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
Las Vegas, NV | Modern Desert Markings


2022
Invitational Solo | Southern Utah Museum of Art
Cedar City, UT | this is and is not my home

Invitational | Vital Spaces
Santa Fe, NM | the color of there seen from here,
the color of where you are not


2021
Juried | Santa Fe Railyards Park
Santa Fe, NM | Urban Ecologies


2020
Juried | Center for Visual Arts
Wausau, WI | Roots: Up Rooted

solo | The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture
online | from

International | distantceramics.com | online
Distant Ceramics | Amaca Award Winner
2020
​
solo | [AC]2 Gallery
Albuquerque, NM | from

Invitational | Garage Door Gallery
Incline Village, NV | a series of ricochets

​
2019
Invitational | UNM Art Museum
Albuquerque, NM | Emergent 2019

Invitational | Southern Utah Museum of Art
Cedar City, UT | Impact


2018
Juried | UNM Art Museum
Albuquerque, NM | HereNOW


2016
KANEKO
Omaha, NE | OEAA Visual Art Nominee Showcase

2015
solo | Petshop Gallery
Omaha, NE | watching the ground

PUBLICATIONS
​“Lithic Record,” co-authored with Nina Elder
Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art
ed. by Jennie Hirsh and Isabelle Wallace
​London and New York: Routledge. 

May 2023

The Roots of the LDS Church's Opposition to Same Sex Marriage
CounterPunch.org
June 2022

Mormon Mythistries: Richard Hansen in El Mirador
(removed)

CounterPunch.org 
March 2022

12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now
Southwest Contemporary Magazine
2021

Unsettling Mormonism
Instagram
November 2020 - Current

Land of my breath, people of my flesh
Self-published
March 2020
AWARDS | HONORS
2020
Amaco Award | Distant Ceramics

2019
Fellowship | Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Scholarship | Phyllis Muth Fine Arts Scholarship
Scholarship | John L. Knight Memorial Scholarship 

2018
Scholarship | Phyllis Muth Fine Arts Scholarship
Scholarship | Fred & Rose Ellen Calkins Scholarship

2017
Fellowship | Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2015
Best New Media Artist | Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards
Best Emerging Artist | Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards

2012
Excellence Award | Southern Utah University

PODCASTS
Clouds in the Sand - A Podcast of Human Challenges
“Art and Myths of US American Innocence and Supremacy" 
Clouds in the Sand: Podcast of Human Challenges
May 2023

Decolonized Buffalo
“Unsettling Mormonism”
Decolonized Buffalo
March 2023

Called to Queer
“nicholas b jacobsen (they/them)”
Called to Queer
February 2023

​Faith and Capital
"Unsettling Mormonism w/ nic"
Faith and Capital
August 2022
The Red Nation Podcast
“Unsettling Mormonism w/ nic & Kobi”
The Red Nation
December 2021

Chatter Marks 
“Erratic Conversations: Pt.3, Futurism and Hope.”
Anchorage Musuem
May 2021
​
A Guide to Art, Activism, & Culture
“Family, Mormonism, and Whiteness”
The Aerogramme Center for Arts and Culture
July 2020. ​
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  • home
  • Las Vegas Piece
    • Las Vegas Piece: The Art >
      • Pioneering Terra Nulliparous
      • Manifest Doomsday
      • “Thus while in plain sight, they remained invisible”
    • Las Vegas Piece: The Essay >
      • Modern Desert Markings
      • Las Vegas Mormon Fort
      • Mormon Mountains Wilderness
      • Mormon Well
      • The End
  • Unsettling Mormonism
  • from
  • to be a rock
  • about
    • more >
      • publications & posters >
        • glossary of unsettling origins >
          • answers / uncertainty
          • appropriate / appropriate
          • arrangement
          • baby and the bathwater
          • body
          • Book of Mormon, the
          • care
          • change
          • the Church
          • clinging
          • concrete
          • decolonization
          • Deseret
          • ebb / flow
          • embodied / embedded
          • extermination / excommunication
          • fake rocks / real rocks
          • fluid
          • Great Basin
          • groudlessness
          • home
          • human exceptionalism
          • ignor(e/ance)
          • inside / outside
          • kin(d)
          • Lamanites
          • land
          • Latter-days
          • magic / ritual
          • map
          • mountain / valley
          • migration
          • mine / mine
          • myth
          • noninnocence / risk
          • opening / closing
          • origins / foundations
          • path
          • phantom pains
          • problematic
          • Red (Cliffs National Conservation Area)
          • reify
          • remember / memory / memorial
          • rocks / stones
          • southwestern Utah
          • spiritual experience
          • stable / settled
          • there / their
          • this land
          • trauma
          • Ut(ah/opia)
          • under / inner
          • "what is"
          • white out / white supremacy
        • I' M P U R E (words)
      • our bodies as/of water
      • sculpture
      • watching the ground
      • sketches
      • pots are rocks >
        • about the clay
        • processing clay
        • pottery >
          • mugs, plates, & bowls
          • planters, baskets, & vases
          • pet bowls
          • ceramics archive