BIO
Cherice Harrison-Nelson is an educator, narrative visual artist, Maroon Queen, performance artist, and arts administrator. As the co-founder and curator of the former Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, she was the co-editor of 11 publications and coordinated numerous exhibitions and panel discussions focused on West African inspired cultural traditions from New Orleans. Her creative expressions have been performed, presented and exhibited throughout the city and world. As queen of the Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society she has graced stages throughout the world.
She performs annually at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Ashe’s Essence Festival Maafa, and the Guardians Institute’s Night-Against Crime. She is the Education and Outreach Coordinator of the Big Chief Donald Harrison, Sr. Book Club. In that capacity she has coordinated hundreds of in-school educational presentations featuring New Orleans artists for thousands of children. Additionally, she spent three years as the director of Congo Kids, a youth program powered by Positive Vibrations Foundation focused on using drumming to foster appreciation of African Diaspora cultural expressions. She contributed to original hand-beaded Carnival Day ceremonial attire worn by her son and acquired by the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Museum in Washington, DC.
Her production credits include: a DVD documentary, music CD, original plays, and the award-winning narrative short film, “Keeper of the Flame.” She is the recipient of several honors including: Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Teacher of the Year,
Mayor’s Arts Award, 2016 United States Artist Fellowship and a 2020-21 Joan Mitchell Artist-in-Residence award. She approaches her art as a cognitive provocateur, with the specific intent to engage observers through imagery and performance that simultaneously explore gender roles, classism and other
limiting/confining norms. Her work is primarily autobiographical as well as simultaneously ancient and contemporary. She uses imagery from her family history, ancestral homeland and life experiences, she is her primary muse. To quote, “I am not masking when I debut my ceremonial attire on Carnival morning, I am revealing my authentic self, naked and rooted in the strength of my personal history. I cannot mask as myself.”
She is currently appearing throughout the City of New Orleans as a contemporary Plague Doctor character in a performance installation focused on the Black Lives Matter movement and writing her autobiography, it is tentatively titled: Maroon Queen Reesie: Pretty, Pretty and So Much More.
She started a fashion line, The Queen Reesie Collection, the first dress, debuted May 8th, her 62nd birthday. Her most recent project, Blown Away, expanded her artistic practice to include LED, fairy, and fiber optics to add depth to the wearable art assemblage, a nod to the Orisha Oya, and New Orleans as a city that has been impacted by hurricanes.
