nikita lelu
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Apr 26
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 29
nikita lelu’s work asks you to look closely. Her sculptures and ceramic figures often start with performance, then settle into quiet, powerful forms. She draws on monster theory and lived experience to question how we look at others — and how those looks are shaped by fear, habit, or care. Her figures lean into vulnerability. They carry history in their shape, and demand attention without needing to explain themselves. The work holds space for empathy, and lets complexity take the lead.
Q: You draw on monster theory to talk about perception. What made that lens feel right for your work?
A: I am curious about our perception of others, how it is governed by learnt values and hegemonic narratives. The monsters of fiction challenge these grand narratives: their defiance of normativity is what characterises them as monstrous. The monster can be an effective looking glass on hegemonic values, exposing the biases and prejudices within.
Q: Your pieces confront the body head-on. What’s the first thing you want people to notice?
A: Their feelings. More specifically, through the rawness of Rinse I’m encouraging a genuine connection. Rinse is taller than I am, that is a big face to have an intimate encounter with. How often can you stare into someone’s eyes the way Rinse invites you? To learn the lines of history on another’s face. To inhabit their story. Rinse takes on vulnerability for the viewer to facilitate an empathetic experience.
Q: The idea of mimicry comes up often. How do you think about blending in versus standing out?
A: As a trans person my body is political. I do not have a choice in standing out. When I think about blending in from that mindset, I think about stealth, about safety and security. Though looking through a hegemonic lens, blending in can become an act of violence through complicity. In that sense, standing out becomes resistance. It is the everyday heroic defiance of the marginalised. It is existing.
Q: Your background in performance filters into your ceramics. How do those two practices talk to each other?
A: Performance is an approach within my practice. Often an idea initially materialises as a performative act but disappears, embodying itself within the object. For a recent body of work Intimate Departures, I set out to create objects of worship and performative rituals to engage in with them. As the project progressed the works became both the object and the ritual: abstract figures caught in private moments of transcendence.
Q: Anger and empathy sit side by side in your work. How do you keep both in play?
A: I don’t see anger in my work. There is certainly rebellion.
My work asks for empathy and in our modern climate, that sadly has become a radical act. The richest man of all time recently likened empathy to weakness. When the most privileged and rewarded people in human history amplify their voices to demonise compassion, you stand up and fight back. It is not anger; it is moral fortitude. It is survival.
Q: When a piece is finished, what does it need to hold for you to let it go?
A: Though I explore universal themes, my works are deeply personal experiences. They are therapy and naturally let themselves go once I have exhausted myself of them. Because of their intimate nature, once they are finished, I’m somewhat embarrassed by them. Suddenly they appear naïve, so I move on. It seems my work needs to hold the potential to embarrass me, for me to let go. Clearly I have a humiliation kink. I did say it was therapy.
