A Provocateur Who Talks to Strangers
23rd January 2011
WARNING: This is not a parody, however much it sounds like one.
The urge to insinuate herself into other people’s lives was evident in her earliest artworks. Ms. Nakadate (pronounced nah-ka-da-TAY) grew up in Ames, Iowa, and moved to Boston in the mid-1990s to attend a program sponsored by Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. A friend at Wellesley College introduced her to the social rituals at that women-only school, especially the legendary parties featuring young men from Harvard and M.I.T. who would arrive at the campus on a weekend shuttle bus.
“It was this moment in the girls’ sort of postfeminist movement where their way of empowering themselves was having these enormous parties where they didn’t apologize for anything,” said Ms. Nakadate, who was fascinated by peers “so unafraid of failure,” and seemingly unconcerned with “trying to please people, or trying to put on the correct veneer.” She spent the next four years shadowing students at Wellesley and other nearby women’s colleges, interviewing them and documenting their lives in photographs.