Nicola L.

It is impossible to overlook these outsized red plastic lips. The material makes us think of lacquer and leather. But these two differently sized lips in Red Lip Lamp (1969) do not make it easy to identify a particular gender. This may well be because the work of Nicola L. (*1937 Mazagan, Morocco, †2018 in Los Angeles) defies any quick ascriptions of gender stereotypes and roles. Nonetheless, in her work the naked female form becomes a preferred and often used motif.

The artist belonged to an avantgarde in the 1960s that used the female body as a starting point for a feminist critique. In the early 1960s, Nicola L. joined the French nouveau réalisme movement, which advocated art that commented on (consumer) society by using already existing objects and materials. Nicola L. developed her art to combine female sexuality with consumer behaviors and the domestic sphere — in particular household objects. With these works that she called ​“functional sculptures” she created objects with the character of items of furniture, exaggerating and then simplifying their outlines. Nicola L. saw her artworks as objects of everyday use, and she even furnished her own home with them. By including the human body in spaces and rooms, her work ranges from witty anthropomorphic sculptures to works that question representations of sexuality and eroticism in social contexts.