Fondation CAB is excited to welcome Nika Neelova as our fourth artist-in-residence at Fondation CAB.
The Moscow-born, London-based artist explores how the human body, the architectural space and the geology of the earth intertwine, and does so over a vast body of work ranging from sculpture to installation. In her research, she is mostly occupied with imagining how man-made artefacts and objects can appropriate individual agency, hinting at a future set out of linear time, evoking a world that precedes; includes and exceeds our current one. Neelova delineates her methodology as “employing the tactics of reverse archaeology reading an alternative human history by examining human-produced objects through the creation of speculative sites, artefacts and other physical remains.”
This manifests itself in works that hover between the organic and the synthetic; between archaeological relics and futuristic protodebris. Unearthed layers expose mutated ruins and explore the fluidity of matter through parallel; contradictory and disparate timelines. This body of work touches on the occurring ecological catastrophe, and the anticipated anthropocene, balancing the tension between human bodies and human-created environments and their understood, but potentially mutated inherent power structure. Neelova lays this tension bare by deploying salvaged architectural materials from lived-in-environments, playing with recognisability and alienation.