Review: ‘Nicola L.: I Am The Last Woman Object’
Clelia Rebecchi, Burlington Contemporary
November 2024
A soft, vinyl sculpture resembling a loosely configured woman-commode is slumped against the first wall of this exhibition dedicated to the work of Nicola L. (1932–2018) at Camden Art Centre, London. Wedged between drawers in the shape of breasts and genitalia, a small television screen intermittently displays the artist’s words:
I am the last woman object
You can take my lips
Touch my breasts,
Caress my stomach,
My Sex
But I repeat it,
It is the last time.
The same words also emanate from the television in the artist’s native French, resonating loudly around the central gallery space. It is a fitting welcome to the largest European retrospective to date of the Moroccan-born French artist, and marks her return to Camden Art Centre, where fifty years ago her work was included in the 1974 group exhibition Soft Art.