Laurel Nakadate at The Zabludowicz Collection

On a routine trawl through The Guardian's online Culture section on Monday, I was happily surprised to come across an interview with performance and video artist Laurel Nakadate; having been to see her latest exhibition at The Zabludowicz Collection at the end of September, I was eager to read what the artist herself thought of the works on show. Nakadate's work plays upon traditional notions of gender, power, relationships and sexuality, using herself and her body very literally within her practice.

"Men just started talking to me. That's how it all began... I told them I was an artist and asked them if they wanted to make something with me. They all said yes and we'd go back to their apartments – either then or another day – and act something out." Nakadate, 2011.
A desire to connect with strangers coupled with an ability to challenge conventional gender relationships makes Nakadate's work incredibly powerful to me. Constantly teetering between hilarious, tragic and unnerving, pieces such as 'Oops!' (2000), and 'Stories' (2005) play upon a sense of voyeurism, whilst presenting her audience with situations in which I found awkward laughter the only way to break the tension.

Though a selection of her photography is on show, I feel she conveys her ideologies far more directly and powerfully through her videos. Pieces such as 'Love Hotel' (2005), and their use of relatively basic video techniques are reminiscent of home videos, and, in the context of this video, home made pornography, playing upon the male gaze
and modes of viewing women. Underlying influences of feminist theory I feel can be seen in works such as 'Exorcism 3 (Dancing in the Desert for Britney)' (2009), in which her erotic dance moves question the focus and role of the female in media throughout Western culture. The highly sexualised use of the artist's body reminds me of Tracey Emin's 'Why I Never Became A Dancer' (1995), a similar exorcism of the standards and moral expectations subjected to women. Similarly, her 'Lessons 1-10' (2002) left, in which she filmed her posing as a life model, subverts the traditional role of the female model in art; here, she is not only challenging the female form in art, but the relationship between spectator and spectacle. While conventionally the feminine subject is passive and subjected to objectification, Nakadate actively asserts herself and her body as a contributor to the work, signally a shift in power, elevating herself above a typical objective viewing.

Though Laurel Nakadate herself claims 'you can never level the playing field when a man and woman are in the same room', for me, she embodies a fierce resilience towards conventional gendered roles. She empowers herself through ownership of her own body, and presents a fresh take upon the feminist "body art" of the 1970s.

For the artist's interview with The Guardian's Eleanor Morgan, please see http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/09/laurel-nakadate-video-performance-artist