Niki Lopez is an Afro-Latina, queer interdisciplinary visual artist, curator, teaching artist, and founder of What’s Your Elephant®. Based in South Florida, her practice explores memory, identity, ancestry, healing, spirituality, belonging, and transformation through mixed-media reliefs, sculpture, masks, painting, installation, photography, video, writing, and community-engaged practice.
Working with sculptural self-portraiture, found materials, cowrie shells, textiles, layered surfaces, and symbolic forms, Lopez creates richly textured works that examine what we inherit, what we carry, what we survive, and what we choose to transform. Rooted in Afro-diasporic cultural traditions, ancestral connection, mindfulness, and personal healing, her work considers self-portraiture not as autobiography alone, but as a vessel through which broader human experiences can be witnessed and understood.
Since establishing her practice in South Florida in 2008, Lopez has developed a body of work that moves fluidly between the gallery and the community. Her curatorial work began in 2009 and has grown alongside her studio and social practice, creating exhibitions, public programs, installations, workshops, and participatory experiences that invite reflection, dialogue, and collective care.
In 2013, Lopez founded What’s Your Elephant®, extending the questions explored in her studio practice into community-centered exhibitions, facilitated dialogue, and creative experiences that deepen public engagement with the themes explored in her artwork. Her methodology operates through interconnected practices of witnessing, reflecting, creating, sharing, and reclaiming — using art as both a personal and collective process of meaning-making.
As a curator and cultural producer, Lopez has conceived and led exhibitions, public art activations, and socially engaged projects including SOIL: Where the Light Enters, Echoes of Empathy: Navigating the Baker Act Through Art, The Art of Justice, Sankofa Arts Project, Aya Arts Project, and the ongoing What’s Your Elephant® exhibition series. Her projects position art as both witness and catalyst, creating opportunities for audiences to move beyond observation and into shared experiences of memory, care, and transformation.
Lopez has worked as a teaching artist for over fifteen years with youth, adults, individuals with disabilities, people impacted by trauma, educators, and communities historically underrepresented within arts spaces. Her facilitation often incorporates sensory and embodied elements — including music, aromatherapy, contemplative prompts, storytelling, and tactile making practices — to foster environments that support reflection, creativity, and connection.
Her work has been exhibited throughout South Florida, New York, and California, and is held in private and organizational collections, including the Housing Authority of the City of Fort Lauderdale, Atlantic Pacific Communities, the L.A. Lee YMCA/Mizell Community Center, and the Ellen DeGeneres Show stage. Lopez’s contributions have been recognized through honors including the 2025 Nguzo Saba Award for Kuumba / Creativity, Broward County Arts & Culture Visionaries Award, Our Fund Foundation’s Commitment to a Cause Philanthropy Award, BLACC + SPARK’s Pioneer of the Year Award, OUT50 LGBTQ+ recognition, and a nomination for the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Fellowship.
What is that (Under her Blue)” by Niki Lopez.
Created for the AIM Biennial 2020 during Art Basel/Miami Art Week- Ephemeral, Public Art Installation.
What is that (Under her Blue), is a ritualistic, site-specific installation in nature to explore some of the traumas concerning Black women within the current climate of the pandemic and racial reckoning as a significant tool in the world. Lopez states “I am a mother, an artist, a healer and a safe space for community engagement, an advocate for human rights and justice.” The installation was be built and documented at Hugh Taylor Birch State Park under a large Banyan tree. The intention of this work is to bring awareness to the inequity and socially underserved in communities of color. “We struggle because of not having what it takes to advance. We struggle in silence because the world needs for us to be strong. This piece will be an attempt to make space for all that is broken within me, within the world, to share it with nature as I share a silent prayer for strength for us all.”
Photo documentation and write up were published in the AIM Biennial 2020 Art Book. Click here for link.
Caressed
Mixed Media Video Installation
Niki Lopez
A self-portrait, mixed-media video installation combining performance art and a poem I wrote about a traumatic childhood memory. This intimate piece is the second installation in my elephant series and is connected to the project ‘What’s Your Elephant’ – Creative Conversations about the Unspoken.
The intentions behind this work are to not only share a personal elephant but to have discussions surrounding unspoken topics such as abuse, survivors of abuse, awareness, the power of a ‘share’ and how the arts can be used to heal, to empower and to educate.
My intention for #whatsyourelephant is to create a safe space where can share & bring awareness. If sharing my elephants empowers even one person to consider their choices & their impact, speak up when they see an injustice, or be a voice for the many who are still living in fear & denial- my job is done.
Caressed is a mixed-media video that debuted as a site-specific installation during the opening of the third “What’s Your Elephant’ art exhibit at the 1310 Gallery – Sailboat Bend Artists Lofts.
Special thanks to: the 1310 Bandits filmmakers team for assisting with the creation of this video
‘What’s Your Elephant™’ is a movement that uses the arts to create a safe space to address the unspoken. It includes art exhibits, talks, interactive installations and workshops. Centering art as a tool for healing, community building and promoting mental health and irradicating the stigmas connected to mental health.
Using interactive arts to provoke awareness and facilitate discussions unveiling unaddressed topics including, but not limited to; gender, LGBTQ issues, discrimination, social and racial justice , abuse and traumas.
WYE works with the public, at-risk groups and communities.
