Image courtesy UCLA’s Hammer Museum website
While UCLA’s Hammer Museum is closed due to COVID-19, the curators still want to talk with you about art.
Join curatorial assistant Matthieu Vahanian at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 6, for a lunchtime art talk on Nicola L, the French visual artist. The talk is part of the “Lunchtime Art Talk” series on the exhibition “Made in L.A. 2020: a version,” the fifth iteration of Hammer’s acclaimed biennial exhibition that bridges East and West with complimentary presentations at The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
The talk is online every Wednesday.
Nicola L., or Nicola Leuthe, was a visual artist who developed a multidisciplinary practice that playfully merged the principles of art and design. Born in Morocco to French parents, the artist was initially associated with Pop Art and went on to work across five decades, creating interactive sculptures, radical performances, and collage-like paintings, as well as films and plays.
Her practice originally framed by the counter-cultural movements, Nicola L.’s expansive body of work was united through an engagement with feminist politics, and the ideals of equality and collectivity. The artist became particularly known for her witty, anthropomorphic sculptures that fused female bodies and domestic objects, materializing the objectification of women.
Nicola L. once described her work as “an ephemeral monument to freedom.”
In 1975, Nicola L. began to concentrate on film projects. In 1977, she directed the feature film “Les Têtes sont Encore Dans L’île” (The Heads are Still in the Island) with Terry Thomas and Pierral, shot in Ibiza. She moved to New York in 1979 and continued to focus on filmmaking.
Her first documentary captured the punk-rock band Bad Brains at the Lower East Side nightclub CBGB. It was followed by a 1981 documentary about activist Abbie Hoffman. The artist’s final film was “Doors Ajar at the Chelsea Hotel,” where she had lived for nearly three decades.
Nicola L. died in Los Angeles in 2018.
To RSVP for the free event, visit www.hammer.ucla.edu/programs-
You may also want to consider supporting Hammer Museum and its mission to champion art and ideas for a more just world. Visit www.hammer.ucla.edu/support for more information.
