Nika Neelova lives and works in London, where she received her Masters Degree from the Slade School of Art, after graduating with a BA degree from the Royal Art Academy, KABK.
Through her work Nika Neelova uses reclaimed architectural materials to explore our sense of time and place. Her sculptures and installations, made often with reclaimed architectural materials, are created by employing tactics of what she calls “reverse archaeology,” bypassing straightforward means of fabrication to find modes of retrieving and revealing information within the multiplicities of human histories within inanimate things. The resulting works of art present the viewer with an alternative reading of human history by examining human evidence in found objects and architectural debris and transforming them beyond functionality and status objects to hold new meaning. In these works, the human body and touch remains as a vestigial memory. In her work Neelova attributes high importance to material transformations often inspired by the latent potency in the materials she uses. Her sculptural works are often focused on the conversions involved in translating existing objects into other mediums, decoding, and recoding their purposes, enacting the processes that were used to shape them, altering their internal structures and liberating objects from their meaning.
Her work has been exhibited in the United Kingdom and internationally, recent solo exhibitions include ‘Very Like a Whale’ at the Santorini Museum in Greece (2023), ‘Thaw’ at Noire Gallery in Turin (2023), ‘One of Many Fragments’ at the New Art Centre, Roche Court (2021), ‘Silt’ at Brighton CCA (2021), CELINE Art Project curated by Hedi Slimane for Celine London (2021), [ъ] [ы] [ь] at Garage MCA (2021), ‘Ever’ at The Tetley, Leeds (2019).
Selected group exhibitions include: ’(Everything) is not what it seems’ curated by Mara Ambrosic for the Piran Coastal Galleries Museum (2023) & NITJA museum, Oslo (2022), From Birth to Earth, Parafin, London (2023), ‘Frieze Allied Editions (2021); ‘Her Dark Materials’ curated by Philly Adams (2021), Art Newspaper 40th Anniversary project (2021), ‘She Sees the Shadows’ curated by Olivia Leahy and Adam Carr for DRAF & Mostyn museum, Wales (2018), ‘Seventeen. The Age of Nymphs’ curated by Daria Khan for Mimosa House, London (2017), ‘Theatre of the Absurd', Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2017).
Nika Neelova was awarded the Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize, the Land Security Prize Award, the Royal British Society of Sculptors Bursary Award and was the winner of Saatchi New Sensations. In 2017 Neelova attended an alternative study program organised by the Wysing Art Centre in Cambridge. In 2019 she was awarded the Arts Council National Lottery Grant supporting the development of her practice.
Nika Neelova first gained recognition for her large scale sculptures and sculptural installations, depicting complex, imaginary environments that suggest a place or a landscape out of time. She participated in numerous residencies and her work is represented in various public and private collections internationally, including the Celine Art Collection, New Art Centre collection, DRAF David Roberts Art Foundation Collection, London; Saatchi Gallery Collection, London; Modern Forms, UK; Noire Foundation, Turin; Fondazione 107, Turin; PERMM Museum of Modern Art Collection, Russia; Museum Biedermann Collection, Germany; Beth de Woody Collection, New York; Jason Martin Collection, Portugal; Levett Collection; Land Securities, London; Beckers Collection, Sweden. Her work is in Private collections in UK, Germany, France, Russia, The Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium.
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