From the mid-1960s and throughout her career, Nicola L (1932-2018) questioned the place of the human body in art through her installations, performances, films and furniture pieces. She began her career by making a name for herself with her Pénétrables, before developing "functional sculptures" from 1967 onwards: footed sofas, television women, eye and mouth lamps, etc.
In 1967, the foot was the first object created by Nicola L, which she installed in her New York loft. In 1968, back in France, she got closer to the New Realists (Arman, Christo, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely) and started to make sofa feet which she exhibited at the Daniel Templon gallery in 1969 and then at Veraneman in Brussels. Pierre Restany wrote a first text on her work: "Un long voyage au bout de la peau".
Eyes and mouths are also important subjects, present very early on, in her drawings. The idea of transforming them into functional sculptures was born during a stay in Ibiza during which she imagined the Œil lamp. In 1969, thanks to Marcel Broodthaers, she discovered a plastic factory in Antwerp which was able to produce the first Plexiglas eyes.
The mouth was designed at the same time. " Takis immediately wanted my Mouth Lamp, which I gave him in exchange for one of his sculptures; the mouth, he told me, is the only lamp in his room...".
Imbued with feminist and political issues of her time and nourished by the humour and fantasy of Pop culture, Nicola L's functional sculptures are today iconic works of the Pop Art movement presented in major international museums such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her works were presented in 2015 in the exhibition The World goes Pop at the Tate Modern in London and in 2021 in the exhibition She-Bam Pow POP Wizz! Les Amazones du Pop at the MAMAC in Nice.
French, 1932-2018
