Pretend Play: Nadia Lee Cohen
Nadia Lee Cohen is arguably the art ‘it girl’ of the moment, a multi-hyphenate creative sought after by collectors and fashion brands alike for her unique vision. VAULT spoke to the photographer and filmmaker, whose work holds a mirror to contemporary culture as it unpacks familiar, and unexpected, tropes and clichés.
Image credit: Nadia Lee Cohen, Diane, 2021, archival pigment, print 203.2 x 152.4 cm. Courtesy the artist and Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles
A graduate of London College of Fashion, where she received the highest honours in fashion photography, Lee Cohen has worked with a star-studded list of collaborators from Tyler the Creator to A$AP Rocky and Kali Ulchis, and created campaigns for fashion brands such as Balenciaga, Mac, Maison Margiela, Schiaparelli, Gucci and Valentino. As a photographer, her subjects have included iconic women such as Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian – whose images for Interview broke the internet again in 2022 – and Sophia Loren. Lee Cohen has also published two volumes of photography – the first Women (2020), was six years in the making. The second, HELLO My Name Is, was published by IDEA in December 2021. A work imbued with warmth and humour, it saw the artist physically transform into 33 characters imagined from 33 found name badges, shown alongside images of a series of still-life found objects associated with each persona, as imagined by Lee Cohen.
In May 2022 the artist staged her first gallery presentation at Jeffrey Deitch gallery in Los Angeles, a thematic showcase of work from her monographs (Women and HELLO My Name Is) alongside video works and sculpture.
Nadia, your project is fascinating for its unique observation of the mundanity of humanity. We know these are fictions you are creating but I suspect most of us want them to be real. So let’s talk about obfuscation and disguise. You are the master of disguise. You clearly love this transformative process. Is it a kind of performance for you?
I do genuinely love it. It’s that child-like appreciation of dressing up combined ... Subscribe to read this article in full
