NIMA NIKAKHLAGH
Violence and melancholy permeate the experience of his work. Nima Nikakhlagh, who arrived in the United States from Iran in 2014, is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York and Massachusetts working with performance art, photography, video, and poetry. Nima’s practice concerns itself with socio-political power dynamics and political resistance approached in a poetic manner. Most of his works are performance-based, and he perceives performance art as not only a form of visual art, but much more, a social-political art form and a social-political art practice. His work frequently uses situation orchestration and some provocation—interruption of daily life—as mechanisms of audience internalization of his concepts; the real action takes place within the consciousness of the viewer. In his words, “the togetherness that street performance art establishes is something truly necessary.” Nima’s works have appeared/been performed in Iran, Europe, Canada, and the United States. He has published two literary-performative books: Bodies, Languages, Truths and This Is Not a Book. Nima received the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art 2023-2024 award and currently, is a gallery director and lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
STARDUST CLUSTERS: MEETINGS WITH MEANING, Curated by Marita Isobel Solberg and Jill McDermid
Gathering forces, gathering knowledge, gathering wisdom, gathering hearts. Grace Exhibition Space now starts a series of local, national and international performance art evenings, dinners and talks delving into questions and reflections on our connections with Nature. In this can be culture, agriculture, embodied culture, connection to animals, plants, trees, bodies and the likes. Humans are part of the deep collaboration, but we have a long tradition of abusing, consuming and ruining our connection. How can we connect through our human way of living today? What changes can we make? What life rituals could be different? We gather performance artists with different backgrounds, a mix of indigenous, native, nature people and city dwellers, reflecting on their connection and belonging to the natural world, land and to each other.
The goal is to create soulful and self-searching performance art that blows our minds, conversations that can trigger our inner marrow and meetings that are deep and meaningful. Our mode of communication is Performance Art, a form that is in movement, space and time, that can involve all art forms, including actions and everyday objects, sharing complicated and deep thoughts and ideas.
We will revolve around the loss of the third wall, an imaginary boundary, allowing the artists and the audience-participants to create a direct dialogue between one another. We will be questioning the boundaries that separate us, how the natural world has no walls, while many of the societies that man has created are limiting. Building societies that are collaborative, but include destruction and violence, while emulating a cohesive order and balance. We are encouraging sharing communities that help one another through music, listening, healing, feeding and giving.
Grace Exhibition Space opened in 2006 as a home for International Performance Art. GES has hosted numerous performance artists, participating in multiple international festivals and art fairs. Our hope is to create the appropriate environment and means for collaborative research between the multicultural neighborhoods of metropolitan New York. We work to establish an environment that promotes our mission, as we seek to bring together local and international artists who will be interested in open exploration and collaboration with the members of our community.