Willa Nasatir’s photography investigates the methods by which narratives are visually constructed, interpreted and revealed. Other Life, Nasatir’s most recent body of work, marks a shift away from her typical practice of altering and re-photographing her printed images. This newfound directness emphasizes the artist’s signature, sculptural approach to photography. Nasatir creates sculptural environments for her material subjects using reflective surfaces. When photographed, light refracts within these mises-en-scène to create unusually dynamic and uniquely abstract photographic compositions.

In Other Life, Nasatir explores the outgrowth of the natural world mutated by fantasy and destruction. In these abstract portraits, Nasatir combines representational imagery that evokes emotion rather than communicates a coherent message. Her work suggests ambiguous dreamscapes populated by anthropomorphized organic and man-made forms. Unexpected materials including false eyelashes, electrical circuitry, and feathers take on new meaning within Nasatir’s otherworldly scenes. Things are not where or what they should be. This nightmarish outlook implies the verge of collapse and references an unraveling of logic and order. Envisioning a landscape outside or after our own, Nasatir’s forms fluctuate between fantasy and dystopia and question preconceived notions of life, human or otherwise.

Willa Nasatir (b. 1990) studied at Cooper Union from 2008–2012 and now lives and works in New York, NY. She has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Ghebaly Gallery, LA; Chapter NY; and the White Room at White Columns, NY. Her work has also been included in exhibitions at the New Museum, NY; Hester, NY; Del Vaz Projects, LA; Company Gallery, NY; and Drei, Cologne.