Nina Mae Fowler’s practice interrogates the mythology of Hollywood, using drawing as a means to both reconstruct and unsettle its most enduring icons. Working from archival material - publicity stills, paparazzi images, and film fragments - Fowler translates widely circulated images into meticulously rendered works that often exist between drawing and sculpture. In doing so, the artist introduces a temporal and conceptual distance between the immediacy of the photograph and the slow, deliberate act of making.

Central to Fowler’s work is a sustained engagement with the female figure as both subject and spectacle. Her ‘Leaning Board’ series, featuring figures such as Elizabeth Taylor and Judy Garland, draws upon the visual language of life-size promotional cut-outs once found along Hollywood boulevards - objects that sit somewhere between devotion and objectification. While rooted in this culture of fandom, Fowler’s works carry a distinctly sinister edge, both in their form and subject matter. Cut from their backgrounds and mounted to project outward at sharp angles, the figures occupy an uncanny space where their physical presence heightens a sense of tension rather than celebration.

‘Leaning Board III, Life (Judy Garland)’ is based on the movie ‘A Star is Born’. Drawing from the climactic scene in which Garland’s character accepts an award, Fowler isolates the moment her intoxicated husband interrupts her speech and, in a humiliating gesture, accidentally strikes her across the face. Removed from its cinematic context, the image becomes a stark and enduring metaphor: a woman who has reached the pinnacle of success through her own talent is, in the same instant, publicly diminished. Here, the glamour of Hollywood is not simply disrupted but exposed - its promise undercut by structures of power that continue to shape and suppress female achievement.

Drawing upon the visual culture of mid-20th century cinema, Nina Mae Fowler uses the past as a lens through which to examine ongoing dynamics of fame, gender, and power. Her works expose the tension between image and reality, revealing the cost of visibility and the fragility that underpins even the most enduring icons.