Nicoletta (Niko) Pazzaglia

Nicoletta (Niko) Pazzaglia is a London-based researcher, educator, and interdisciplinary artist originally from Italy. Her practice is rooted in embodied and performative approaches across photography, performance, and site-specific installation to explore the cultural and social construction of bodies and identities through an affective and interdisciplinary approach. Niko has published work on photography, theatre, and mental health, and she currently teaches visual art and photography in secondary school.

The Washer is a durational performance in which I obsessively wash a dress made from white bedsheets using soaps containing mud, charcoal, carbolic soap, and lipstick. Rather than cleaning, the act stains the fabric— metaphorically showing how ideologies of purification and cleanliness contaminate and harm bodies. This piece offers a critique of how odourless sanitation promotes fear of difference—desensitising individuals, erasing diversity, and silencing uncomfortable truths. (Photo & video credits by Ben Holman)