Episode 19: Nikita Gale

Abstraction as Resistance — Reclaiming Identity Through Strategies of Refusal  — The Labor of Performance — Relating Audience and Performer — The Politics of Rest — Saying No

Nikita Gale is an L.A.-based multi-media artist working in sound, sculpture, and video. In 2018, Gale made a solo show about changing her name—a form of reclaiming her own identity away from a patriarchal lineage. This refusal in many ways sets the stage for Gale’s multi-disciplinary practice, as she explores what it means to insist on self-autonomy and abstraction as a method for refusal—a means of presenting her subject matter to the viewer on her own terms.

In our hour-long conversation Gale and Zappas talk about how ideas of chosen identity, abstraction, refusal and rest can act as powerful mechanisms in artwork, as well as in protest and dissent. In 2018, Gale made a solo show about changing her name—a form of reclaiming of her own identity away from a patriarchal lineage. This refusal in many ways sets the stage for Gale’s multi-disciplinary practice, as she explores what it means to insist on self-autonomy and abstraction—a means of presenting her subject matter to the viewer on her own terms. We talk through the relationships between audience and performer, and how those play out in recent works by Gale: “Audiencing” and “Private Dancer.”