Rose Nestler (1983) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her practice focuses primarily on mixed-media sculpture, through which she constructs environments and installations that often engage with irony and a playful dimension. By employing bright, vivid colours as well as forms and imagery that recall a pop aesthetic, Nestler creates a seductive surface from which reflections on social and gender-related t dynamics emerge.
The work See Her Live (Lucia) unfolds as a veritable staging: a scene framed by an open velvet curtain suggests the beginning of a performance, inviting the viewer into a theatrical dimension. Through the wings, glimpses of can-can dancers’ legs—elongated, dynamic, and clad in fishnet stockings—come into view. At the centre of the composition, precariously balanced on a pole, a silicone plate holds two eyes made of alabaster.
It is precisely this element that reveals the primary iconographic reference: Saint Lucy. According to tradition, the martyr either removed her own eyes or had them torn out for the sake of her faith, thus becoming the patron saint of sight and light. In the history of art, Saint Lucy is frequently depicted holding a plate bearing her own eyes, symbolising sacrifice and a higher, spiritual vision.
Nestler reinterprets this iconography in a contemporary key, situating it within a context that intertwines the sacred and the profane. The installation stages a reflection on femininity, desire, and pleasure. What do can-can dancers and a religious figure have in common? The artist appears to suggest a form of irreverent and self-determined femininity, expressed through the body and its display, challenging—and at times subverting—gender hierarchies and the institutional structures that have historically regulated its representation. In this way, the relic, embodied by the eyes, moves beyond the spiritual realm to become an intimate and ritual symbol of femininity itself.
Through the device of the theatrical setting, the performative character of the work is further amplified. Nestler invites the viewer to question how the female body is seen, represented, and imbued with meaning, continuously oscillating between object of desire, sacred symbol, and instrument of self-affirmation.
Rose Nestler
See Her LIVE (Lucia), 2022
Velvet, Silk, Neoprene, Batting, Thread, Wood, Bolts, Aluminum, Silicone, Alabaster, Epoxy, Lightbulb and Spandex
188 x 147.3 x 73.7 cm
Courtesy the artist and Mrs., Maspeth, NY | Copyright The Artist | Photography by Olympia Shannon
Rose Nestler
See Her LIVE (Lucia), 2022, detail.
Courtesy the artist and Mrs., Maspeth, NY | Copyright The Artist | Photography by Olympia Shannon
28/03/26
