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.