This ‘Duppie’ won’t bite

Work by Nickola Pottinger in her show “Fos Born,’’ at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Greenwich, Conn., June 8, 2025 through Jan. 4, 2026.

The museum says:

“Nickola Pottinger’s practice spans drawing, collage and sculpture. Her objects often appear in the round, on the wall, or sometimes within tableaux. She refers to her sculptural works as ‘duppies’ (Jamaican patois for ghosts) in reverence to her Jamaican ancestry and the West Indian community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where she was raised and still resides today. Composed out of recovered heirlooms, excavated and recycled materials, Pottinger creates pigmented paper pulp from family documents, past artworks and rubble using a handheld kitchen mixer. Akin to clay or concrete and imbued with memories of her family lineage as well as folklore heard as a child, she embellishes her mystical creations, which sometimes manifest as protectors, couriers or even spirits of the deceased, with oil pastel and watercolor, casts of her hands and face, teeth, gilded Yagua leaf, lava rocks, Bantu hair knots and more.’’