The Art Pledge
Portrait of Nika Neelova

Nika Neelova

Born in
1987
From
Moscow, Russian Federation
Lives and works
London, United Kingdom
Represented by
Osnova Gallery
Website
http://www.nikaneelova.com/

UN goals

Tags

I think what I would like viewers to take away is a different vision or approach to spaces where they exist, and I would like them to reconsider and to look again on omnipresent features of architecture, and imagine their past and their future, and how they would look like a hundred years from now.

Biography

Nika Neelova's sculptures and installations evoke associations with history, collective memory, and an imagined post-human future. Interested in architecture and its metaphysics, the artist frequently re-uses architectural artifacts subject to destruction alongside jesmonite and plaster. Being interested in the anthropocene and using the method of what she calls ‘reverse archaeology’, Neelova examines man-made objects stripped of their initial functions, and reimagines their (hi)story, questioning how human and geological landscape might look in the future. 


Nika’s post-soviet background is important in understanding her artworks, which represent artificial ruins of a future’s unknown environment. This apocalyptic and dystopian feel with a sense of “decay” about her sculptures refer to Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies “Stalker” (1979) and “Solaris” (1972), which similarly take place in an unidentified ‘place’ on the planet.


Sigmund Freud in his essay “Aetiology of Hysteria” (1896) stated that the value of ruin is in the future life that is embedded in it. Neelova’s installations, being modern ruins, follow Freud’s idea, as they reveal past stories, carry the idea of future life, and unite the past and the imagined future.

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