Nicoletta “Niki” Barolini is an artist and science illustrator based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. For more than three decades she has worked as a professional graphic designer and illustrator, including 19 years as Art Director and Science Visualizer at Columbia...
Read MoreNicoletta “Niki” Barolini is an artist and science illustrator based in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. For more than three decades she has worked as a professional graphic designer and illustrator, including 19 years as Art Director and Science Visualizer at Columbia University. Her fine art practice draws on a background in anatomy and biology, reimagining the body through fracture, distortion, and transformation. Working with paper, cardboard, and acrylic paint, she creates cut-out figures that embody both vitality and vulnerability, flowing between gesture and structure.
Her work has appeared on the covers of leading scientific journals such as Nature Communications, Cell Chemical Biology, and Science Translational Medicine, and has been exhibited at Bethany Arts, the Westchester Arts Council, and Sarah Lawrence College. She was a featured artist in Cow Parade New York and has illustrated for Oxford University Press and Penn State.
Through both her scientific and artistic pursuits, Barolini explores how structure gives way to imagination—inviting viewers to reconsider the human body as a site of rhythm, fragility, and transformation
