Nicola L’s Red Coat | TateShots

Artist Nicola L was born in Mazagan, Morocco in 1937 and now lives and works in New York City. Since the mid-1960s her work has interrogated the female body as an instrument and object.
Influenced by the socio-political upheavals and demonstrations of the 1960s, Red Coat, 1969, was designed for a concert of Brazilian musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, which took place at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Created for various improvised performances in public spaces, the Red Coat is exemplary of Nicola L’s experimentation with presenting the human body as a conceptual piece of art.
The Red Coat strips the ‘body’ of any particular identity and immerses the wearers in a communal performance to declare the peaceful notion - ‘Same Skin for Everybody’.
After working between Europe and the United States for nearly twelve years, in 1979 Nicola L moved definitively to live and work in New York City.
The Red Coat is on currently on display at Tate Modern as part of the The EY Exhibition: The World Goes Pop, 17 September 2015 – 24 January 2016. Find out more:
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