NICOLETTE MISHKAN

Nicolette Saghi Mishkan (b. 1986, Los Angeles) received her BA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2008. Her exquisitely rendered oil paintings investigate parallels between the mythical mermaid and contemporary woman on man’s dry land. As a first-generation Persian-American, Mishkan’s mermaids’ fundamental suspension between human identity and exotic (and exoticized) alien echoes women’s position within patriarchal cultures where female subjectivity is problematic and muted: their heads are covered, their chests are bare, they are free when hidden underwater, they are immobile when exposed on land.

Recent exhibitions include YOU ME ME YOU, curated by Rachel Keller, Nicodim Los Angeles (2022); I is Other,  Lyles and King, New York (2022); The Drawing Centre Show, curated by Franck Gautherot, Seungduk Kim, Tobias Pils, and Joe Bradley, Le Consortium, Dijon (2022);  TEKNOLUST: OBJECTOPHILIC FUTURES, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler and Melanie Lum, Woaw Gallery, Hong Kong (2021); She Came to Stay, Andrea Festa Fine Art, Rome (2021); Sirens, Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles (2020–2021, solo); and When You Waked Up the Buffalo, curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Nicodim Los Angeles (2020).