Nicola L

Nicola L. (1932 – December 31, 2018) was a multidisciplinary artist known for her personified, functional and playful sculptures. Her work often has an explicitly feminist aim, exploring domesticity and the objectification of bodies. [1] Borrowing from both pop art and the Parisian Nouveau Réalisme movements, she worked in sculpture, performance, video, and design. [2]

Nicola L.
Born1937
Mazagan, Morocco
DiedDecember 31, 2018
NationalityFrench-Moroccan
StylePop art

Personal life

L. was born in Mazagan, Morocco. In the 1960s and 1970s she traveled and worked in Paris, Ibiza, and New York City. In 1979, she moved into the Hotel Chelsea.[2]

Career

L. studied art at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She was influenced by sociopolitical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. [3]

Although she started as a painter, she soon turned to sculpture. One of her early series was Pénétrables, sculptures that were intended to be worn. In 1969 she created "The Red Coat" for Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso's performance at the Isle of Wight Festival. The piece can be worn by 11 people at once and was intended for improvised group performances. [4]

In the mid-1960s, she began a series called Nine Historic Hysteric Women Collages. The nine portraits, painted on bedsheets with collaged materials, feature women who faced social and political injustices, including Joan of Arc, Billie Holiday, Ulrike Meinhof, and Marilyn Monroe. [1] One of her most well-known pieces is "Little TV Woman," a sculpture of a vinyl woman with drawers for breasts and a television in her stomach. The TV monitor reads, “I am the last woman object. You can take my lips, touch my breasts, caress my stomach, my sex. But I repeat it, it is the last time.” [2]

Although L. showed with Yves Klein in Paris and received early critical acclaim, she wasn't recognized as a pioneering female Pop artist until her work was shown at the Tate Modern's “The World Goes Pop” in 2015. Her first institutional retrospective was in 2017 at the SculptureCenter in New York curated by Ruba Katrib. [2]

References
  1. "The Feminist and Critical Pop Art of Nicola L." Hyperallergic. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
  2. "Nicola L., Feminist Pop Artist, Dies at 81". Artnews. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
  3. "NICOLA L. (1937–2018)". Art Forum. Retrieved 6 January 2018.
  4. Morgan, Jessica; Frigeri, Flavia (eds.). The World Goes Pop. Yale University Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-0300216998.
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