FAN GIRL
Nina Mae Fowler
2026
My work begins with the gathering of images and information — things seen, read, collected or encountered that lodge in my memory and sometimes resurface years later.
As a student living briefly in Seville c.2004, my apartment was near a gay bar where a series of photographs of male genitalia hung on the wall, each covered by a plain sheet of paper. A ceiling fan caused the sheets to lift one after another, briefly exposing the images beneath in a kind of Mexican wave. Twenty years later, I can’t remember whether this was intentional or whether censored images were being accidentally revealed. Either way, I loved it.
Later around 2019, in a film museum in Berlin, I encountered a vintage postcard of Marlene Dietrich embellished with tiny feathers that could be blown upwards to reveal her legs. Like the fabric flamenco postcards I remembered from Spain, but more provocative - decoration had become a mechanism for concealment and revelation.
Invited to make work for Houston inspired by the Midwest, these two memories resurfaced. I began gathering images of actresses with histories rooted in the Midwest and Texas, arriving at the nine women who form Fan Girl.
Each figure is embellished with ostrich feathers — a material associated with Hollywood glamour, showgirls, striptease and feminine spectacle. The feathers attract the gaze while obstructing it: concealing bodies, revealing gestures and shifting between seduction, protection, disguise and threat.
Fan Girl is both an exploration of the distance between the woman, the performer and the public image, and a tribute to nine remarkable actresses whose lives and careers reveal the complexities behind their constructed narratives. Drawn from found photographs, film stills, candid and publicity shots, the works revisit moments in which the women appear caught somewhere between the private individual and the performed self.
Similar to past works I continue to export the possibilities of bringing my sculptural practice to the drawings - extending the 2-dimensional surface into the room. The fans themselves serve as obvious metaphors for us as viewers, stirring the feathers in a restless attempt to see what lies beneath the surface - ultimately leading to the downfall of the subjects involved.
Returning to those two remembered images from my past: Spanish paper lifting in the breeze and souvenir feathers blown aside. Both a fleeting reveal, followed by concealment — and the irresistible temptation to keep looking.
Cyd Charisse — Amarillo, Texas
Born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, Texas, Cyd Charisse began dancing after contracting polio as a child, initially to rebuild her strength. She became one of MGM’s great dancers, celebrated for a combination of extraordinary physical control and sexual allure. In the drawing, Charisse is poised en pointe, her body almost architectural in its discipline. Black ostrich feathers erupt from her waist into an extravagant, almost predatory silhouette. They amplify the sensuality projected onto her body while concealing the strength beneath it, transforming the dancer into something at once glamorous, animalistic, dangerous and vulnerable.
Shelley Winters — St. Louis, Missouri
Born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Shelley Winters was initially promoted by Hollywood as a blonde bombshell, but deliberately pursued more complex, less glamorous roles, eventually winning two Academy Awards. In the source image, boxing gloves collide with fishnet stockings and heels: Winters is simultaneously fighter and pin-up. The white ostrich feathers heighten this contradiction, creating a frivolous showgirl skirt around a woman posed to fight. They conceal the sexualised body Hollywood expected Winters to display while revealing something altogether more combative underneath.
Shelley Duvall — Fort Worth / Houston, Texas
Born in Fort Worth and raised in Houston, Shelley Duvall entered acting almost accidentally after being discovered by Robert Altman’s team. Her distinctive appearance and performances resisted conventional Hollywood ideals of female beauty. In the drawing, Duvall makes a defiant but smiling two-fingered gesture towards the camera. White ostrich feathers form a skirt around her waist — invoking glamour, showgirls and striptease — yet her trousers remain clearly visible beneath. The feathers attempt to dress her for feminine spectacle while Duvall’s gesture turns the gaze back upon the viewer.
Ruby Dee — Cleveland, Ohio
Born in Cleveland and raised in Harlem, Ruby Dee combined a seven-decade acting career with writing and civil-rights activism, often refusing to separate her political convictions from her artistic life. The drawing depicts Dee in a publicity still for Buck and the Preacher (1972), capturing a tense moment with her unsmiling gaze. The black feathers initially appear to obscure her body but instead lead the eye towards the sharp object in her hand. Concealment becomes revelation: the seductive, decorative plumage gives way to something potentially threatening. Rather than softening Dee, the feathers sharpen her presence, transforming glamour into a suggestion of hidden strength.
Judy Garland — Grand Rapids, Minnesota
Born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Judy Garland performed from early childhood and was signed to MGM at thirteen. The studio controlled her weight and punishing schedule, introducing drugs that contributed to a lifelong dependency. She died from an accidental overdose aged 47. In the drawing, Garland appears barefoot and apparently in nightclothes, arms raised before a microphone. The white feathers restore spectacle to this unusually exposed figure, dressing her for the stage. They simultaneously conceal and enable her — a vulnerable woman requiring enormous stamina to sustain the performance.
Marilyn Monroe — Los Angeles, with Midwestern roots
Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles, Monroe descended on her mother’s side from a Midwestern family with roots in Indiana and Missouri. An unstable childhood preceded her transformation into Hollywood’s most enduring image of female sexuality, although Monroe increasingly fought for greater control over her work. In the drawing she is caught running in a backstreet behind the studio lot, far from the immaculate fantasy. The white feathers pursue her like an unwanted piece of Hollywood glamour as she puts in the real work it takes to maintain her image: simultaneously dressing and obstructing her, they suggest the Marilyn persona as something attached to Norma Jeane — an image she could inhabit but never entirely escape.
Kim Novak — Chicago, Illinois
Born Marilyn Pauline Novak in Chicago, Kim Novak arrived in Hollywood after studying art and working as a model. Columbia Pictures quickly set about reshaping her appearance and identity, but Novak resisted aspects of the studio’s control and eventually left Hollywood to return seriously to making art. In the drawing she presents the expected trappings of stardom — sequins, heels and black feathers — while hiding an Oscar behind her back. The feathers become part of the diversion: dazzling and excessive, they foreground glamour while helping to conceal achievement, questioning what Hollywood chooses to make visible in a woman and what it leaves unseen.
Jean Seberg — Marshalltown, Iowa
Born and raised in Marshalltown, Iowa, Jean Seberg went from an unknown teenager to international actress and French New Wave icon. Her support for Black civil-rights organisations later made her a target of FBI surveillance and harassment, including a false story surrounding her pregnancy. Her daughter died shortly after a premature birth; Seberg committed suicide in Paris aged 40. In the drawing, however, she is laughing and apparently carefree. The white feathers heighten this lightness until it becomes almost deceptive. Playful and absurd, they obscure precisely where the photograph seems to reveal, suggesting how little a public image can disclose about the life within it.
Dorothy Dandridge — Cleveland, Ohio
Born in Cleveland, Dorothy Dandridge began performing as a child before becoming a celebrated singer and actress. Carmen Jones made her the first Black woman nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, yet Hollywood offered her few roles equal to that recognition. She died aged 42. In the drawing, Dandridge stands wide-legged at a microphone in trousers, caught in the physical act of performing. White ostrich feathers impose a showgirl skirt upon her trousered body, simultaneously invoking and disrupting glamorous femininity. What the feathers conceal, the trousers reveal: a woman whose identity exceeds the narrow role constructed for her.