Nikki de León’s work spans painting, sculpture, objects, and text, exploring how structure, color, and space inherit strength that is build from the unknown. Growing up between Germany and California, her practice has been shaped by a continuous exploration of identity, place, and belonging. Her paintings often emerge from dark grounds, allowing color to gain presence and intensity through contrast, while her sculptural works play with balance, tension, and movement. Across media, she is drawn to holding together opposing forces — structure and intuition, weight and lightness, darkness and color — creating compositions that allow strength to emerge from uncertainty. Her work opens spaces where contrasts coexist, inviting viewers to experience them not as conflict, but as quiet, steady forms of strength.

Artist Statement

What began as a deconstruction of the unknown became a way to give new shape to the structures that live within. I grew up between languages, places, and stories that to me didn’t quite align, and eventually found a quiet certainty in what I couldn’t yet name, but could feel was building. There are places you return to. Not because you stayed, but because they’re somehow part of you, and you’re part of them.
So I gave them form, as they rise from unfamiliar ground — somewhere out of the dark, onto a new foundation. In words, in image, in space.
Like building structures that don’t explain, but stand. Compositions that feel right because they are built on newfound connection, not intention. Opening a space where weight and brightness coexist, and where their contrast becomes a quiet kind of strength.

I have always been fascinated by how things are built, how materials connect, and how structures hold together. This curiosity led me to study architecture, where I explored form, rhythm, and spatial relationships. Alongside this, I became deeply interested in the human dimension — how people inhabit, move through, and shape their surroundings, and in the incredible variety of ways humans themselves are structured: standing on different foundations, shaped by different experiences, yet holding together in their own ways.
Over time, this focus on human scale led me to interior architecture and design, where I could engage more closely with how people intuitively interact with spaces. During my studies, I explored exhibition and furniture design, investigating how objects mediate behavior, invite play, and create connections. I began creating small-scale steel constructions and functional series that combine structural precision with a sense of balance and lightness, exploring how even heavy materials can convey movement and freedom.
When the Covid pandemic restricted access to my workshop, I returned to drawing and painting, working from dark grounds to allow color to emerge. This became a way to continue exploring structure, space, and composition through a more intuitive and expressive lens. I discovered how color gains presence and intensity from darkness, creating tension, contrast, and brightness within a single composition.
Across all media — painting, sculpture, objects, and text — I am drawn to holding together opposing forces: light and weight, structure and intuition, darkness and color, the personal and the universal. My work seeks to create spaces where these contrasts coexist, where forms feel grounded yet alive, and where brightness emerges from shadow as a quiet, steady kind of strength — inviting others to experience the joy and intensity that contrast can bring.