Kelani Nichole

Founder, Transfer, Los Angeles

In 2013 Kelani Nichole founded TRANSFER, an experimental gallery that focuses on simulated experiences, offering a platform for artists working with all kinds of technology – from GIFs and video games to algorithms, VR and AR. The gallery relocated from Brooklyn to Downtown LA in 2019; it continues to put on virtual exhibitions under the banner ‘TRANSFER Download’, and to run pop-ups internationally. Through the TRANSFER VR Commission platform, Nichole has facilitated major VR works by artists including Alfredo Salazar-Caro, whose Border Crossing Beta 3.0 offered a lo-fi, apocalyptic simulation of the US-Mexican frontier. Beyond her work at TRANSFER, Nichole has worked extensively in the tech sector, specialising in experience-design strategy for a host of companies; she is also a founding board member of the Current, a non-profit museum in New York that offers an alternative model of collecting and patronage for contemporary media art, and is supporting the establishment of ProteanDAO, a new collective for the conservation of time-based media art.