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Biography

Laurel Nakadate is a photographer, filmmaker, video and performance artist. She was born in Austin, TX and raised in Ames, IA.

Nakadate earned a BFA from Tufts University and The School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and an MFA in photography from Yale University. Her first feature film, Stay the Same Never Change, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to be featured in New Directors/New Films at The Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center. Her second feature film, The Wolf Knife, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and was nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award, and an Independent Spirit Award. Her 10-year survey show, Only the Lonely, premiered at MoMA PS1 in 2011, and her photo series Strangers and Relations opened the 2015-2016 season at The Des Moines Art Center. Nakadate’s most recent projects include the photo series The Kingdom, and the critically acclaimed group show Mother, which she co-curated with Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects in NYC which was then expanded into Labor: Motherhood and Art in 2020 in collaboration with New Mexico State University.  

Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Princeton University Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, LACMA, the Guggenheim Museum, the Saatchi Collection and other private collections in the US and abroad.

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