A PERCEPTUAL ZONE: Nicol Vizioli / Nissa Nishikawa and Kapila Venu

A Perceptual Zone is a month-long exploration of dance in dialogue with the elements. Born from bodies attuning to land, season, and storm, it coalesces in continual contact with the biosphere.Dance arises from the necessity to respond, moving in step with shifting conditions, shaped by the forces of nature. It is an origin of ecological art: wisdom inscribed in fascia, constellations of movement resonant with animal and elemental intelligences. It proposes an ethics of listening and being-with. It unfolds as a communion with what exceeds the self: the stretch of trees into sky, vibration of soil, pressure of air, gravitational pull of another body, the throb of the cosmos. In this reciprocity, rhythm becomes a living cycle — an environmental intimacy through which the human is re-imagined.

Throughout October, artists Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, Nicol Vizioli, Nissa Nishikawa, Kapila Venu, Lewis Walker, and Yen-Ching Lin offer workshops, installations, film, photography, and performance. Their practices, experimental and traditional, are gestures that honour the earth while remembering dance as both instinct and offering.

A Perceptual Zone is not performance alone. It is an opening, a space of witnessing, where dance becomes relation, navigating the currents of co-existence.

• Gallery Open: Wed - Saturday 12 - 7pm
• Finissage: Saturday 6pm - 8pm

In Gallery I, Nicol Vizioli and Nissa Nishikawa offer a series of hand-printed photographs and raw materials sourced from their ongoing collaboration, which explores dance-journeys in open-air environments. In Gallery II, Yakshi, a film by Kapila Venu, will be screened in continuous rotation. The work weaves together image, landscape, sound, and character from the folklore of Kerala. A finissage will take place on Saturday evening, with both Vizioli and Nishikawa in attendance.

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Nicol Vizioli is a visual artist and educator working primarily with photography and film. Trained in Fine Arts and Cinema in Rome and in Photography at the University of the Arts London, Nicol’s practice is grounded in raw physicality and a symbolic visual language. Drawing on mythology, painting, and a profound connection to the natural and animal world, her work weaves together the representational and the primal. Guided by these core principles, she moves across disciplines, currently expanding her studio practice through film and, more recently, sculpture.

Recent commissions include the London Contemporary Orchestra, Akram Khan Company, South London Gallery and Kew Botanical Gardens. Her work has been exhibited in international galleries and art fairs such as Scope Basel (CH), Somerset House (London, UK), the Zabludowicz Collection (London, UK), Trienniale di Milano (IT), The XV Biennale de la Mediterranée (Thessaloniki, GR), Roundhouse (London, UK), Watou Festival (Poperinge, BE), Rosphoto (St.Petersburgh, RU) amongst others.

Nissa Nishikawa’s multidimensional practice comprises performance, poetry, painting, sculpture, and moving image. She researches and interprets traditional forms of dance, ritual, and craft in ways that illuminate animistic and alchemical philosophies through an embodied and structural approach. Nishikawa often works in the open air and in studios equipped to house fire, interconnecting the arcane with the supra-sensual, the living earth, and its conscious inhabitants.

Kapila Venu is a practitioner of Kutiyattam, one of the oldest living theatre traditions in the world, from Kerala, India. She is a disciple of the legendary Kutiyattam maestro Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar and the renowned exponents Guru G Venu and Guru Usha Nangiar. She is also a practitioner of Mohiniyattam dance, which she learned from her mother Guru Nirmala Paniker. For more than two decades, she has travelled the world performing, teaching, and giving workshops on Kutiyattam. She has studied with renowned Japanese avant-garde dancer Min Tanaka and has performed in two of his choreographies, – Rite of the Forest (2005) and Thottangal (2007).

She has also collaborated with internationally recognised artists and scholars such as Dr. Eberhard Fischer, Peter Oskarson, and Wally Cardona. She is a guest lecturer at the National School of Drama in New Delhi and a Master Teacher at the Intercultural Theatre Institute in Singapore. A film on the life and work of Kapila Venu, titled “Kapila”, directed by Sanju Surendran, won the National Award for Best Cultural Film at the 62nd National Film Awards of the Government of India in 2014. Kapila was awarded the highest honour for young artists by the Government of India – the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar, the Kumar Gandharva Samman of the Government of Madhya Pradesh and the Sanskriti Award of the Sanskriti Pratisthan.

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