January 2024
Nicolette Mishkan
Portrait of Nicolette Mishkan by Matthew Flores @ravedungeon, 2023
Editor-in-Chief Amanda Quinn Olivar speaks with the painter and performer about her artistic journey, inspirations, and the empowering narrative intricately woven into her work.
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. Mishkan’s paintings are portals into a utopia where land or sea legs are not required to venture the totality of the globe, where men are nonexistent, and where violence only exists in the pleasure of bondage or as a rite of spring. In her cosmology, the mermaid swims through the symbolic order, exploiting her duality to tickle, provoke, and entangle her established relationships with paternal consciousness.
It was great to meet you in New York recently, at Johnson Hartig’s show during fashion week! Please tell our readers about yourself.
Yes! It was such a trip to be there and meet you. Back when I was at Otis studying fashion design, Johnson was one of my mentors. Attending his runway show as a guest (almost twenty years later) is so surreal… he continues to be a beacon of light.
My family is Iranian-Jewish. Everyone was born in Iran before the revolution; I’m the only one made in the USA. Growing up in Los Angeles, I was always painfully shy, even around my own family and other Persian kids. I didn’t relate to being Iranian, Jewish, or even American. I tried to fake-assimilate, but I was too weird. I had to create a new space for myself.
My initial interest in fashion was probably sparked by the fact that I was always much smaller than my peers. I made my own clothing because I could never find, let alone afford, anything that fit. My desire to create grew, the more I paid attention. Thierry Mugler, Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Vivienne Westwood will forever be inspirations. I dreamt of a future where I could manifest physical beauty rich with cerebral, historical, and esoteric meaning into the world, like them.
However, by the time I graduated from Otis and landed my first jobs in the industry, the lifestyle and hours burnt me out. I felt withered. I grew sickly in body and spirit and desperately needed change. That change found me through embracing LA: warehouse parties, film screenings, art shows, trips to Joshua Tree, meditation, naturopaths, healers, breathwork, yoga…
Permaid, Brentwood Manor, 2015, courtesy of Nicolette Mishkan and Aeschleah DeMartino
As all this was happening, a friend gifted me a really weird, black, head-to-toe, faceless mermaid suit for my birthday. Later, another friend photographed me wearing it on the beach. This was when Permaid was born. She was my avatar, an absurdist, alien, S&M mermaid discovered washed ashore in Malibu and adopted by a Persian family. My photographer collaborator and I would create public, semi-structured interventions in which to shoot her. She’d go on Tinder dates, show up at parties, and even hosted two anti-SeaWorld QVC-themed sales on a fake shopping network. Permaid existed purely for pleasure and allowed us to create from a place of joy without expectation. The joy was infectious—she became a minor viral phenomenon at the onset of Instagram, which allowed us to travel in her name and opened up many new opportunities for us as artists.
Looking back, I can now see that Permaid caused me to consider the mermaid, a creature I’ve been drawn to as long as I can remember, more in-depth. Towards the “fin” of that project, around 2018, I began to paint again in earnest with the siren as my muse. My mother is an oil painter and teacher, and growing up, I sat through years of her classes instead of daycare. There are so many beautiful allegories in the siren and the waters she inhabits, and they’re ubiquitous throughout cultural mythologies. I see the mermaid as an allegory for the wild, untamed female, fiercely sovereign, powerful, and dangerous in the oceans, yet perennially threatened on man’s dry land. My painting practice examines her universe from a holistic and pridefully feminine gaze.
Detail, Nicolette Mishkan, Goodbye Pisces, 2021, oil on canvas. 30 x 40 inches
Nature plays a significant role in your art. Can you talk about your early exposure to it and how that interest has grown and changed?
I look to nature and the unseen worlds with my artwork for inspiration and clarity. I hope my viewers can feel this!
I see nature as our connection to greater powers inside and outside ourselves. We are nature. The way we’ve been conditioned to live leads us to disconnect from the instinctual and, in my opinion, deeply intelligent parts of ourselves, which exist separately from the mental mind. There’s an endless Pandora’s box of symbolism in nature. You can take any plant, animal, mineral, planet, etc, and connect their meanings to different archetypes / systems / energies within us. I like using mermaids because they’re half human, half animal. There’s no way of disconnecting her “evolved” human half from her more primal, natural fin without killing her both physically and allegorically (Sirens severed into pieces have been a recurring theme in my paintings). She’s a physical embodiment of the harmony that can exist between humans and nature and the chaos that ensues when they’re thrown out of balance.
My fascination with nature has been deeply embedded in me for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved animals and flowers—they are alive, and their existence is straightforward and brimming with integrity. There’s no judgment or pretense in nature. I believe this type of feral simplicity keeps me grounded and present. As time goes by, I’ve focused more on reconnecting with the natural world to maintain balance inside myself. Growing up, my house was always filled with my mother’s paintings of classical nudes. The naked body was never a big deal and was seen as a vessel of beauty.
Nicolette Mishkan, Elixir, 2023, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 inches
Nicolette Mishkan, Lorelei, 2023, oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
What are you working on now, and what drove you in that direction?
Lately, I’ve been considering the siren archetype and how so many modern societies condemn the feminine, forcing it to become destructive and cannibalize itself. Women’s bodies are under hyper-scrutiny. In many ways, we are expected to be both the man and the woman, but without any of the emotional, spiritual, or even financial support. It’s sickening for both sides.
These issues have been fermenting in my mind as I witness the ongoing reduction of women in society: our fight for equal treatment in the workplace, our right to bodily autonomy, and also the institutionalized injustices towards women in the Middle East, especially Iran and Afghanistan.
Do you feel a responsibility to address social and global issues through your work?
My work considers the psychology resulting from lifetimes of conditioning teaching women to be good daughters and housewives. I hope it can help people reconnect with their natural selves and empower the divine feminine in and around them.
Nicolette Mishkan, Surfacing, 2022-23, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Nicolette Mishkan, Pleasure, 2022-23, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
“My work considers the psychology resulting from lifetimes of conditioning teaching women to be good daughters and housewives. I hope it can help people reconnect with their natural selves and empower the divine feminine in and around them.”
Who or what are your three biggest inspirations or influences?
Thierry Mugler caught my attention during the Myspace days. I watched every runway video I could find on YouTube years before I dipped my feet into any fetish or drag culture. It felt like a lotus blossoming in my brain. All his runway shows are playful celebrations of diversity, fantasy, subculture, and craftsmanship.
I first learned about Ingo Swann and his work in the fields of remote viewing and psychic research, but I didn’t discover his paintings till years later. Swann was not an artist who came from a traditional painting or fine art background—he took his experiences working for the CIA and other psychic research and created otherworldly, vibrant compositions that reflected his fascination with the unknown and his explorations of human consciousness. The work is instilled with a sense of awe and wonder, and at the same time, it has a sense of humor and lightness. There’s a sincerity to it that really touches me.
Around 2018, I came across Dolores Cannon. I found her explorations of past life hypnosis and healing interesting at first, and as I learned more, the complex layers of past lives, time, and consciousness began to register in a whole new way. She was a pioneer in a field that previously didn’t exist in the Western world, and she was practicing in the Bible Belt of all places. I love her teachings to look inward and reconsider the soul’s journey from a greater perspective. Even though her practice flew in the face of local convention, she went down the rabbit hole without fear and found herself in unexpected and unfamiliar places. She did things out of genuine curiosity and innocence, allowing her to ask new questions and empowering people like me to do the same.
Nicolette Mishkan in her studio, 2023
What is your favorite art accident?
Fabio, my adopted Chinese Crested dog, had an unfortunate scuffle with a coyote last week. It’s a miracle he’s still alive—he’s little, he only weighs eleven pounds, and he’s even afraid of cats—but apart from his tail being amputated and a broken jaw, he’s almost back to normal. The vet gave him one of those cones of shame to keep him from gnawing on his stitches, but I felt bad making him wear it because it looked so uncomfortable. I found this pink squishy fabric donut on Amazon as a replacement. It’s incredible. When Fabio wears it, he looks like a cross between avant-garde fashion design and Porky Pig, saying, “Th-Th-The, Th-Th-The, Th-Th... That’s all, folks!”
Nicolette Mishkan
@nicolettemishkan