The Wholeness of Nicole Combeau
Photo by Pedro Wazzan
Nicole Combeau is a Colombian-American visual artist and educator living in Miami, and she is the practitioner behind Commissioner’s first art-making workshop of Season Eight, Sun and Stitch: Anthotype Printing & Stab Binding, at The Kampong.
Through photography and book arts, she works with elders, families, and communities to share stories about care, ritual, and memory. Her projects often begin with her own family history and grow into collaborative programs rooted in Miami’s diverse landscape. She also organizes and coordinates programming for the Creative Aging program at Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), which offers free arts workshops for adults 55+ years.
We are so very honored to collaborate with Combeau at the intersection of her artistic and learning practice—an inspiring follow-up to our first activation together, Community Portraits, in 2023.
Read our Q&A with the artist.
You identify foremost as an artist, and also as a writer, photographer, educator, and community practitioner. Is there one discipline—or aspect of your practice—that feels more dominant than the others?
My first creative love was photography, and it continues to be the medium that speaks most to me. It’s where I learned how to see and how to listen. I’m drawn to the way light gives dimension to flatness, and how a photograph mirrors memory—how it shifts, fragments, and endures. Still, creativity for me is a way of life rather than something bound to one form. Writing, teaching, movement, and making all become languages for what I’m trying to understand or express.
How do you decide when something will live as a book, suspend as a textile work, or exhibit as a photograph? Can you please walk us through your creative and decision-making process?
The work usually guides me, and I’m still learning how to listen. If something feels discreet, intimate, and uncertain of itself, it becomes a book. If it leans toward fluidity and memory, I print on textile. And if it wants to take up space—to be loud and unapologetic—it becomes a print.
bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress speaks of education as the practice of freedom. What does education—or being an educator—open up for you?
bell hooks writes about education as a practice of freedom, and that resonates deeply with me. The art world I entered as a young graduate in New York felt insular and extractive, but art had once saved my life as a teenager. It gave language to what I couldn’t say. Teaching became a way to reclaim that purpose, to create spaces where art is a mirror rather than a market. Being an educator means building environments where people can unfold, express themselves fearlessly, and access the tools to make sense of their worlds.
Tell us about Creative Aging and how your work with elders came to be so integral to your practice.
Creative Aging is a free immersive art program for adults 55+ at PAMM, which I’ve coordinated since 2023. The work feels deeply personal to me because my creative life has always been guided by my relationship with my grandmother, who raised me and continues to shape how I understand care and belonging. I often think about Malidoma Somé’s writing on Dagara culture, where elders are understood as being close to both ancestors and the newly born—a reminder that we’re all part of a larger continuity shaped by those who came before and those who will come after. In a world that tends to overlook people once they’re no longer seen as “productive,” my work with older adults affirms their knowledge, creativity, and presence as vital to our collective story.
What do you want people to take away from your classes and creative experiences?
I want people to remember that creativity is inherent to their humanity—that it’s a right, and a powerful tool for connection to self, place, and community.
Where can we see your artwork, how can we support you?
Come visit my studio at Bakehouse Art Complex—upstairs in Studio 9U. You can also keep up with my work on Instagram at @beau_nicole, where I share upcoming exhibitions and workshops. The best way to support my practice is by showing up, participating, and continuing the conversations that begin through the work.
Learn more about Combeau’s practice at nicolecombeau.com.