Nico Contreras is an Ecuadorian Canadian interdisciplinary artist working between movement and text in theatre, contemporary dance, and film. Honoured to have learned with mentors across the Americas, from Quito’s Teatro Malayerba to Toronto’s Aluna Theatre, Nico has spent the last decade exploring the curious relationships between identity and abstraction in artmaking on a personal and community scale. Founder of the expresARTE program for Panamerican youth, he has most recently led research and creation processes bringing together artists from a variety of diaspora to critically reflect on the roles our practices play in our life and work.
Nico is currently working on ñaño, a play exploring the relationship between brothers in connection through absence, grief and loss. It is a farewell letter and a collection of ephemeral reminiscences, an exploration of how the moments we have shared make us who we are, and a testament to the power of memory to freeze, distort, and perhaps reveal those who we have loved and lost.
Photo credit: Naïma Contreras Tejpar