Niki van Buuren

Niki van Buuren is a young artist living with a physical disability. In 2003 she suffered a
massive burn injury, leaving her with not only significant disfiguring scarring but permanent upper limb
impairments and amputations to nine digits.

Despite her injuries and long physical and mental recovery Niki returned to her tertiary studies and
completed a Bachelor of Design in Photography in 2006, and a Graduate Diploma in Education the
following year. Niki currently works as a teacher, mentor and professional photographer and will be
commencing a Visual Arts degree via correspondence in August 2010.

Niki works primarily in the photographic medium and enjoys exploring experimental image capture
techniques and outputs with pinhole and plastic toy cameras. She will often employ an intuitive image
capture technique adopted in the early years after her injury, where she was forced to ‘fly blind’ due to
an inability to hold a camera to her eye.

In addition to her photographic pursuits Niki is a freelance graphic designer and occassionally works with various painting and drawing techniques.

Niki has been an exhibitor in several group exhibitions and will exhibit a large-scale photographic work
in Perception: Arts and Disability Showcase at the Belconnen Arts Centre ACT in late 2011.