exhibitionism, and hostility merge with gullibility, cunning, and folly." One of Nakadate’s first works was her film Happy Birthday (2000). In this film, Nakadate asked three men to celebrate her birthday with her in intimate, one-on-one encounters. Surprisingly, however, it was not her birthday and she did not know these men. Happy Birthday (2000) establishes the direction of her work to follow, in that she explores the uncertainty of relationships with strangers. Through her work, Nakadate aims to establish herself as a host and a hostage simultaneously, diving deeper into the controversial issues of being an Asian American woman in a white, male dominated society. Two of Nakadate’s most important works, Beg For Your Life (2006) and Oops (2007), focus on themes of control and danger. Nakadate focuses on the ideas in feminism and empowers women to reverse the power in gender roles while putting herself in “dangerous situations with men." Through these stranger interactions, Nakadate works to send the message that she is the one who controls the narrative. Her newer photographic work, Relations, explores Nakadate's own genealogy through photos of distant relatives. Her feature film The Wolf Knife continues Nakadate's common themes of voyeurism, connection, and intimacy. Reception New York Times critic Ken Johnson called her "smart and scarily adventurous." She was also featured in the book 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers.Art critic John Yau, in an article in The Brooklyn Rail on her 2011 retrospective, writes to the artist: "You explore a more unstable terrain, always intent on making 'a narrow escape,' the only option you see for yourself. Meanwhile, the middle aged, potbellied man is condemned to pirouette, again and again. It is his one true moment of beauty and tenderness recorded for posterity—you have given him his 'narrow escape' and he knows it, as he does what he is told." Nakadate uses her artwork to further discuss her Asian American identity by using ideas of “objectification, spectacle, and alienation." As pointed out by art critic John Yau on looking deeper into the messages of Nakadate's work “it doesn’t matter if an Asian American artist disavows race; she will be grouped as such because of an inherent institutional marginalization. And even despite the well-documented continuation of institutional racism and gender.” Nakadate portrays post–Asian American ideals and Yau’s concepts in her Strangers and Relations'' (2014) piece. Nakadate does not appear in any of the photos in