Altered Reality – Gallery

Vernita Nemec, also known by the performance name Vernita N’Cognita, is a visual and performance artist, curator, and arts activist based in New York City. She is known for her soft stuffed sculpture, collages, artist’s books, photographs, detritus works, and installations. In 1969 with Carolyn Mazzello, she originated and contributed to X-12, one of the first exhibitions to feature only women artists. In the early 1970s, she was a member of Art Workers Coalition and Women Artists in Revolution (WAR). She also wrote for the feminist art periodical, Womanart, and worked with arts activist groups, including Art Against Apartheid and Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D). In 1978, Nemec, Barnaby Ruhe, and Bill Rabinovitch organized the Whitney Counterweight, an exhibition that protested the elitism of the Whitney Biennial. In 1999, she became the part-time director of Viridian Artists, an artist-owned gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City. From 1994 to 2011, she organized 19 exhibitions of Art from Detritus around the United States; they consisted of environmental art made from recycled materials. Nemec’s own visual art includes detritus works, for which she has been labeled an “environmental artist”.