In 1954, the Moroccan artist Nicola L. moved to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts. Her teacher was the painter Jean Souverbie. “Cut the body up,” he told her, “in the same way that light is cutting the live model.” In the 1960s, she moved away from painting and embraced sculpture, which she termed “functional art.” Nicola L.’s sculptures of women were often works of cabinetry, with drawers serving as mouths, eyes, and breasts, and sometimes a television screen fitted into the torso—the female body as entertainment system. Her art, she once said, “is an ephemeral monument to freedom.” Nicola L. died in 2018, at age 85. Camden Art Centre presents the U.K.’s first full-scale retrospective of her radical work. —Elena Clavarino