Nadja Lana’s “Body Beings” – Voyeuristic Portraits of Lust and Fear
A frog, a vulva, a dolphin, a phallus, and a horse’s head. At first glance, these motifs may appear unrelated, yet they converge vividly on Nadja Lana’s canvases.

Like peering through a window, the artist offers insight into a state of emotion oscillating between lust and fear — a driving force in her painterly practice that demands not only to be seen, but to be watched.
The intense sexual charge of her work is impossible to ignore. It manifests not only through the consistent nudity of anonymous hybrid creatures, but also through her choice of perspective and the fragmented, cinematic glimpses that compel direct observation. Viewers are immediately made into voyeurs.

In doing so, they follow the artist herself, who confronts her own desire for voyeuristic observation and celebrates the very act of looking on the canvas. But the moment of physical lust is always accompanied by an undertone of fear — a fear of the unconscious, the forbidden, and of one’s own boundaries as well as those of others.
It’s a fear that can both inspire and paralyze. The resulting dissonance — what’s often described as “pleasurable fear” — a tension between two opposing emotions, is vividly conveyed in Lana’s work.

Through the visual language of art, she manages to contain these lustful, ecstatic beings within constructed pictorial spaces — allowing for a mode of observation that is both indulgent and controlled.

By objectifying the body and distancing it from any identifiable personhood, Nadja Lana approaches it as if it were a research subject. The artist does not view her works as sensual or erotic, but rather as sober expressions of “body knowledge.”
As references for these erotic scenes, she often uses photographs she takes of her models. Sometimes, she steps in front of the camera herself — becoming both model and subject of her own studies.

The central depictions of bodies in sexual acts are accompanied by numerous graphic elements. Though more restrained in appearance, they provide a structural framework within which each scene can unfold. Lana’s “body beings” are embedded in rhythmic architectures and glowing color fields, framed by lettering and accompanied by ornaments reminiscent of Japanese woodblock prints.

In this collage-like approach, Nadja Lana conveys an emotional state that goes far beyond the painted image. Her two-dimensional works invite more than just viewing — they evoke a feeling that touches on the viewer’s own (lack of) sexual shame, making them unflinchingly witness and voyeur to a deeply personal experience of the artist herself.

— Art Historian, Anna Lang