Nicolette Mishkan (b. 1986, Los Angeles) graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2008. A first-generation Iranian American, she lives and works in Los Angeles.

1. Your work explores the idea of escaping one’s current reality. Do you see escapism as a form of survival, rebellion, or something else entirely?  

All of the above. Escapism can be a means to imagine and reorient your inner compass towards what you desire. In these paintings, I consider spirituality as a temporary means of attaining a higher state of being despite the consequences. It’s like when you go out and get loose at a club but then you have a hangover the next day. Or maybe you let off some steam and now you feel recharged. Either way, at some point you had to leave the club. 

2. Reincarnation is an interesting theme in your work. Are you imagining past lives resurfacing, or is it more about transformation in the present?  

I’m thinking of the psychological process of rebirth after letting go. This can be from singular circumstances that force your life to change, or the basic cycles we encounter seasonally, monthly, daily, etc. With this body of work, my siren is going deeper and deeper down a dark hole of drunken release. The further she goes the more she lets go of herself. She is emptying out to become a vessel for something new. In doing this she is healing and reclaiming herself. This becomes her rebirth. 

3. The presence of nude women in your work is striking. Do they embody purity, vulnerability, power—or perhaps all three? What draws you to this imagery?  

When I began painting I never really thought about my choice of nudity. In hindsight, I realize that for me the naked body symbolizes truth and honesty. There’s no attempt to manipulate or dress anything up. It’s also vulnerable. I think of the tarot card for “strength.” My relationship with my body also influences these ideas. I like my body. I used to feel burdened by it, but now I feel lucky to have it. It’s an endless source of inspiration. 

4. Wine appears throughout your paintings, reminiscent of blood, indulgence, or ritual. What does this symbol represent in your visual language? 

Across cultures, wine has symbolized life force and connection to the sacred. In this series, my focus on wine starts loosely from the Sufi perspective where wine is a metaphor for spiritual love and a path to the divine. The experience of drinking becomes a means to annihilate the ego and “hammer the mind into the heart.” It forces the intellect to submit to love so it can work with the higher consciousness held in the heart. 

5. Water can signify cleansing, rebirth, or the unconscious. How do you use it to shape the emotions and narratives in your work?  

I started out with the idea of Lethe, a river in Greek mythology located in the underworld. It is known as the river of forgetting and oblivion because its waters would wash away memories. Water is inherently feminine. It is the realm of the emotions and collective unconscious. In my work, this watery underworld river is a place where my sirens come to drink and let go of their identities and disconnections from each other. The drunker they get, the less they are able to cling to the rocks, those foundations of intellect and ego, before they are ultimately consumed by the abyss. 

6. Your work touches on eternity. Do you see it as something cyclical, serene, or even haunting? How does this theme manifest in your paintings?  

I examine these life cycles as an endless loop of forgetting, then remembering, then forgetting again. Every remembrance brings a new perspective to what was previously known. The siren archetype is an eternal figure connected to themes of endings and beginnings. From the Greek Nerieds to Yemaya of the Caribbean, she is intimately tied to the life-giving and life-taking waters. The eternal gateway in and out. 

7. Your upcoming exhibition at Megan Mulrooney marks your most exciting solo show. What can we expect from your upcoming show?

Lots of nudity and wine.