Télérama - 13 mars 2002

niki de la isla

Founder of Nexo in 1986.

Residencie at Le 6B since 2012

​

de La Isla, a multimedia artist, grew up in La Isla de Arosa, Galicia, until she could escape Franco's dictatorship by leaving Spain illegally with her mother to start school in Paris.

​

She began to take pictures in 1976 thanks to the magazine Pif Gadget and obtained her degree with the French Society of Photography in 1987. She received multidisciplinary artistic training : dance, music, literature (Sorbonne in 1986),cinema (Cinéscrip in 1986), theater (N'Co in 1991) and finearts (ADAC in 1990).

​

She met Robert Doisneau in 1989 and spent an afternoon at his home to receive his advice and encouragement to start her career. He took her back to the bus station and said : "You have a good eye and with your head you will go far". As Robert Doisneau told her to use the status of artist-author correctly and that he would like all artists to know it and benefit from it so she founded Nexo to give back what she learned.

​

She worked with the photographers' collective Le bar Floréal in 1989, then trained as a graphic designer. She created the Pygmalion magazine in 1993, participated in five issues of La Revue Noire and in the creation of the magazine DBD - La journal de la BD and did so for 16 issues. 

​

Niki published the first website in France in1995 with Jérôme Thorel for Nexo. In 1999, she directed the Mon OEil gallery in Montmartre from 1999 to 2001. Then began a decade collaboration with the Fondation Abbé Pierre as a multimedia graphic designer (photo, documentaries, communication) and regularly exhibits for them at the ESH. 

​

In 2012, Niki got a workshop at the 6B collective in Saint-Denis and has since devoted herself to her artistic creations such as a musician than as a photographer.