Laughter, screams, tears, camera flashes, a great deal of blow-dries, a few fur coats.
Nina Mae Fowler delves into the Hollywood archives, gathering from the internet and flea markets paparazzi photographs and on-set shots, film stills and promotional portraits — fragments that together form the matrix of her drawings. By bringing them back, by enlarging them, she continues to wear down these icons seen a thousand times over, inscribing her gesture more in the realm of distance than of appropriation. A distance between the instantaneity of the snapshot and the slow time of drawing; a distance, too, between glamour and disillusionment. For Fowler chooses moments where the image cracks, where people falter: a drunk actress, a clumsy dancer, two lovers falling out. This is neither satire nor nostalgia, but a way of reminding us of the fragility of those who carry our myths — in this case, that of cinema and its star system. - Thibault Bissirier for Gazette Drouot, 2026
Fowler's works have been exhibited internationally, includingsolo exhi bitions in London, Paris, Berlin and Leipzig, and are held in public collections including Oxford University and The National Portrait Gallery, London. In 2018, David Lynch's establishment Silencio in Paris held a retrospective of Fowler's work. She is included in private collections throughout Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia. International film, art, music and fashion luminaries such as Sir Ridley Scott, Jude Law and Caroline Issa are amongst her collectors.
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Leaning Board III, Life (Judy Garland)
