Laurel Nakadate

Laurel Nakadate’s videos, photographs, and sculptures challenge conventional notions of propriety, volition, and gender roles. The complicated spectacles she constructs with male strangers walk a thin line between voluntary embarrassment and exploitation. Nakadate’s three-channel video projection I Wanna Be Your Mid-Life Crisis features the artist encouraging middle-aged men to dance and undress themselves while she participates by doing likewise. They candidly struggle to appease or ingratiate themselves to her, creating a sense of palpable discomfort in the viewer.

Nakadate was featured in MoMA PS1’s 2005 survey of emerging artists, "Greater New York," and she had a solo show at the museum in 2011. In 2009, Nakadate directed her first feature-length film, Stay the Same Never Change.