
Laurel Nakadate’s work has a lot to do with time and the necessary changes that come with it. In the early noughts she became well known for provocative, strange videos, such as ‘Oops’ (2000), which she staged as a 20-something in the homes of older men she met by chance on the street. The ironic, strangely tender and ambiguously exploitative works were possible because of her youth, as was the media’s sometimes aggressive reaction. Since around 2011, the artist has moved away from featuring herself in the starring role—not least because her “body was up for discussion at all times,” as she explains during our interview—and started to focus on extended notions of family, though in a rather elegiac and melancholy way.