Nicole Zisman is not your average artist. Her art solely focuses on contemporary womenswear that is known for taking its onlookers on a mystical contemporary journey.
Based in London, Zisman began her journey as an artist at Central Saint Martins. Here she learned about sustainability within fashion and art. Although Zisman focuses on creating womenswear, she wants her audience to know that her art is also about connection and bringing Londoners together, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eleana Kostakis: How would you describe your art and artistic style?
Nicole Zisman: I am an artist and designer based in London. My eponymous womenswear label introduces the notion that authenticity is the new modernity through a future-glam lens of the designer’s Venezuelan Jewish heritage. The label and its products take form through contemporary reflections of ethnicity, memory, migration and mysticism. Judeo-Latin and Hasidic spirituality and aesthetics sensually meld within audacious contemporary visual discussion that features my cross-disciplinary creative approach, my unconventional use of craft techniques, and my obsession with creating high-impact, uncompromising visual narratives. The universal desire for unity, connection and high-quality human interaction in the 21st century drives my brand’s visual language and communication.
EK: What is the process of creating your art?
NZ: Research, design development, textile sampling, pattern cutting, toiling, final sampling, campaign design and planning, photography, photo post-production, communications, finance, admin, order fulfillment…. and then you begin all over again each season!
EK: Do you have any inspiration for your art?
NZ: My Fall/Winter 2024 collection is called Wisdom Is The Memory Without The Emotion, which was presented at the Sarabande Foundation in London in showroom format.
I started by looking at the Venezuelan-Jewish weddings of the 1990s-2000s, which for me, represent the naive idea of inherent glamor within life — the idea that everything will be beautiful forever. That these new marriages will stay happy and permanently endure, that our children will grow up all together, united and happy in Caracas as we did. Anti-Jewish hostility feels a distant memory two generations back, and the community as a whole (“La Comunidad”) feels as though it is running towards the light. And then the contraction, the tzimtzum, happens. The country falls to dictatorship, families are forced to migrate, marriages begin to break.
And the hyper-glamor changes with the contraction. The subsequent ‘problem-solving’ wardrobe features all-in-one skirt-trousers, key-belt accessories and print motifs that glamorize the Londoner’s state of running and unraveling. Hasidic and Kabbalistic symbols work with my signature “shattered glass” technique to remind the collection that brokenness is beautiful, and that life must be lived with joy on principle.
EK: Can you give me a day in the life?
NZ: Every day in the studio is different! Some days I’m away teaching at Central Saint Martins or traveling for research or for work. I’m definitely a “wake up early, go to bed early” person. The days when I wake up and right away put myself into gratitude are always the days that I get the most out of. It’s about going into joy as a framework or state – not waiting for it to come as a “feeling” – because when a person is mentally in that framework of ‘joy on principle,’ they receive the most real and authentic messaging from the universe. This is both Hasidic philosophy 101, and general Latin American attitude – nothing genuine comes to a person in a state of anxiety or sadness. Practically doing this is, of course, extremely difficult – but I’ve been especially intentional about keeping this up during the design and making process of Fall/Winter 2024.
EK: What do you want people to take away from your art?
NZ: My work is an invitation into my world, where universally-experienced states and emotions are processed via the framework of my Jewish ethnicity, Venezuelan nationality, and the consequent mix of cultures. In a sense, it’s also a self-portrait of existing as a Londoner, what that means in the first place, and all of the chaos and constant unraveling that comes with it. Fall/Winter 2024 is a bit of a personal confrontation with the fact that London is not the same city I moved to ten years ago. It’s an incredibly low-trust city (for many reasons), and people are gasping for genuine connections with other people and for some kind of unity, yet no one really knows how to achieve these two. My brand is actively trying to fight this – not just by dressing people that live this reality, but by inviting audiences to really get to know a rather punk culture, mysticism and story within a joyous creative context. Perhaps it can inspire Londoners to really get to know each other as well, and maybe even eventually stop being so afraid of each other.
EK: What was it like creating your own art book?
NZ: Quite honestly, I decided to produce the book on a whim. I had all these editorial, research and process images lying around and it felt a shame to let them sit and collect dust. I realized approximately halfway through that this book was starting to become a curated archive for my brand, which I started in 2023 a few months after the release of my book. Across fashion, sculpture, print and moving image, the work addresses everything from identity and assimilation to the contemporary tensions between physical and digital culture. From my formative years working in the Viktor & Rolf atelier, to curating my first solo exhibition, the book follows my creative process right up until launching my brand.
All images courtesy of the artist.
