Survivor. Muse. Creator. Destroyer.  One of pop culture’s most original female artists, Nico has long remained one of its most enigmatic.

After an early career as actor and muse for filmmakers such as Fellini and Warhol, German-born Christa Päffgen blazed onto the American music scene like a meteor. Her 1967 debut with The Velvet Underground spawned one of rock’s most enduring works, but rather than becoming devoured by the New York arts scene she risked it all, shunned the limelight and dedicated the years until her premature death creating a body of work that was pioneering and marginalised, but all hers.

The Nico Project opens the line between Nico’s potent imagination and us, and commands from the shadows a figure who should never have been consigned to it.

Inspired by her stark, innovative 1968 album The Marble Index, performer Maxine Peake (Black Mirror, Shameless) and director Sarah Frankcom (Artistic Director of Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre)—alongside 15 female musicians from Australia and the UK—lead this exhilarating exploration into the world of female creativity and its devastating cost in a field dominated by men.

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PHOTOS | Jon Shard