Milestones
Contemporary
in Visual Arts
by Nadia Lee Cohen
VN-060525_E
“She’s not sleeping. She’s melting.”
⠉⠁⠗⠕⠇⠑ ⠐⠣⠼⠃⠼⠚⠼⠃⠼⠃⠐⠜ ⠃⠽ ⠝⠁⠙⠊⠁ ⠇⠑⠑ ⠉⠕⠓⠑⠝ ⠉⠁⠗⠕⠇⠑ ⠐⠣⠼⠃⠼⠚⠼⠃⠼⠃⠐⠜ ⠃⠽ ⠝⠁⠙⠊⠁ ⠇⠑⠑ ⠉⠕⠓⠑⠝
The sculpture Carole is part of HELLO, My Name Is, the debut U.S. solo exhibition by British artist Nadia Lee Cohen at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles. Created in collaboration with sculptor Worshipmina, the work presents a hyperrealistic reclining female figure rendered in silicone and real human hair. Arms folded, eyes shut, the subject appears serene — but her body is mid-melt, oozing over and through the metal frame of a white poolside lounger. Flesh slides, drips, and pools below her. Nothing about her stillness is stable.
Carole may appear asleep — but closer inspection reveals her collapse. The chair and the figure are one; the boundary between the object and the body dissolves. The sculpture was painted by Jack Currier and features detailed hairwork by Ms. Gratia. The technical precision pushes the viewer into an uncomfortable intimacy with something that feels both familiar and off-limits — a collapsed monument to aging, excess, and performance.
The emotional weight of Carole lies not in spectacle, but in its quiet refusal to conceal deterioration. Cohen doesn’t mock beauty — she embalms it mid-rot. The tan lines, the eyelid tension, the drips of resin, all operate as traces of something both gone and still present. Carole becomes a totem of self-maintenance undone, a fantasy that didn't hold, suspended in the moment before it liquefies entirely.
Set within a show of 33 constructed personas, Carole stands out as neither satire nor sympathy, but a haunting embodiment of femininity under pressure. The work exists between control and surrender — between the mirror and the melt. It is not a moment captured, but a moment deteriorating in real time.