Who Isn’t Nadia Lee Cohen?
May 2022. Nadia Lee Cohen’s first solo exhibition HELLO, MY NAME IS opened at the Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Los Angeles. Works from Nadia’s first two book projects (Women and Hello, My Name Is) shared the vast gallery space with video installations and sculptural works. A major critical and commercial success, the show became a landmark on the LA cultural landscape.
An artist, photographer and filmmaker, Nadia Lee Cohen works inside popular culture. Cinema, commercials, shopping malls and all the lurid leftovers of Western consumerism inspire her work, which then re-enters the mass media in the form of magazine covers, music videos and Instagram posts. As each circle completes, another level of commentary, criticism and, indeed, popularity is reached. In the worlds of high and low art, Nadia Lee Cohen is raising the floor to reach the bar.
Born on an isolated farm in the English countryside, Nadia’s parents helped her build sets in their garage for her earliest film and photographic projects. She relocated to Los Angeles in search of the Hollywood scenery that inspired her, only to find the real Hollywood Boulevard was one of trashy stores and broken dreams. This sad but true reality became her new source of inspiration. Her photographs and films are character-driven visions of saturated and surreal dreamscapes that capture the manifest pleasures and visceral terrors of the urban environment.
In 2020 Nadia published her first book Women with IDEA; a major monograph six years in the making; the book featured 100 previously unseen portraits. A heartbreaking work of theatrical ambiguity, naked in its honesty and deeply moving. Women was an immediate success. Across three editions, the book sold 5,000 copies in three days.
As a film director, Nadia has worked with Beyoncé, Tyler the Creator, Lana Del Rey, A$AP Rocky and Katy Perry amongst many others and her music videos and commercials have been lauded and awarded by jurors of the Cannes Golden Lions, VMAs, SXSW, Berlin Film Festival and Rolling Stone. Commercially, she has worked extensively in fashion with Balenciaga, YSL, MAC, Maison Margiela, Adidas, Schiaparelli, Gucci and Valentino. As a photographer, Nadia has shot iconic women including Billie Jean King, Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian and Sophia Loren.
Arguably her ultimate subject is herself. Nadia has been profiled by Interview, Artnet, Vogue, Dazed, i-D, The Sunday Times, AnOther, Numéro and Huffington Post. She appears as herself, and as a front row guest, at fashion shows and events. If these personal appearances blur the lines between artistry and celebrity, her work in self-portraiture certainly does not. It is purely art. Nadia has photographed herself in many guises throughout her career. It is this ongoing project that has led to the creation of her second book Hello, My Name Is published by IDEA in December 2021 and sold out the same day.
Hello My Name Is sees Nadia physically manifest herself into 33 characters (both female and male) imagined from 33 found name badges. It is a demanding work of make up, prosthetics and costume. Alongside each portrait is a still life of found objects associated with each persona. Nadia herself is unrecognizable in many of the portraits – only the true character of the character is seen. The project lends this biography its title: Who Isn’t Nadia Lee Cohen?
