subway ticket collages —
How it all started
In 2001, after being introduced to the New York City subway system, Nina became inspired by the thousands of disposed MetroCards laying around in the subway stations. Having been raised in Germany—a country that strictly enforces trash recycling—she began to rid the platforms of the disposed subway tickets and bring new life to this everyday object most consider trash.
Nina started repurposing the old, disposed tickets and turned them into art. After exhibiting her collages in coffee shops and a residential lobby in the West Village, Nina's work has quickly grown in popularity. Since then, she has earned a global following of art collectors and her work has been exhibited in various galleries across the U.S. and Germany.
How Nina makes her collages
Nina upcycles used, expired MetroCards by cutting them into small pieces, sorting them by color, and rearranging the pieces into mosaic-like collages. The process takes about 8 hours for a small collage and up to 100 hours for larger ones. The subjects range from landmarks and city scenes to celebrity portraits and animals.
All artworks are one-of-a-kind and can contain over 10,000 pieces from up to 500 MetroCards. Nina uses the front of MetroCards for color collages (yellow, orange, blue and black), and the magnetic strip and back of MetroCards for black and white collages.
