Nicole Eisenman

From drawing and painting to print-making and sculpture, Nicole Eisenman’s practice combines formal experimentation with wide-ranging references to art history. Her critical and often humorous commentary on the ever-changing nature of public life consistently challenges power structures and normative conceptions of gender.

Nicole Eisenman: What Happened documents the breadth of the artist’s career with over 200 colour illustrations, explored in ten newly commissioned texts. Essays by curators Mark Godfrey and Monika Bayer-Wermuth survey developments in Eisenman’s work since the 1990s, while Chloe Wyma considers Eisenman’s recent engagements with national and institutional politics. Alongside are texts by artists, curators and writers, many of whom have collaborated with Eisenman and provide personal reflections on significant past projects or reflect on the lesbian and queer communities to which she has been so central. These contributors include Jadine Collingwood, Britta Peters, Ann Philbin, Helena Reckitt, Joe Scotland, A.L. Steiner and Nicola Tyson.

Spanning art made over thirty years, this publication traverses Eisenman’s engagement with technological, political and social changes which have shaped our individual lives during this period, leading to her recent investigations of protest and activism.