Nikima Jagudajev

Nikima Jagudajev (1990) is a US-born, Austrian/Uzbek artist and choreographer. Their performance-based work is a collaborative act of building worlds in which unexpected encounters happen through various, often game-like structures. Re-schooling—or how play, as an ordered activity that has its end within itself, subverts the institution—is the core concept of Jagudajev’s artistic practice. Always durational, the disruptive and unfamiliar nature of their large-scale, long-form megaworks asks for the interactions that take place to be similarly unfamiliar. Performers and visitors hang out, in one way or another, within the strange and unexpected nature of these constructed worlds. As people come and go, the space changes configurations, keeping the interactions from calcifying into socio-political norms, rendering the world specific, disorienting, and queer.

Jagudajev’s work is represented in the collection of mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Vienna. Solo exhibitions of their work have been shown at mumok (2024), Accelerator, Stockholm (2024), WIELS, Brussels (2023), Shedhalle, Zürich (2022), and Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2021). Other shows were held at Kiasma Theater, Helsinki (2025), Kurimanzutto, Mexico City (2020), Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2019), MoMA PS1, New York (2018), Human Resources LA (2018), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017), and the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2017), as well as in the context of Beyond the Black Box at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (2024), KAAP’s Dansand! Festival, Ostend (2023), kunstenfestivaldesarts, Brussels (2022), Material Art Fair’s Immaterial, Mexico City (2020), 89+ at LUMA/Westbau, Zürich (2017), and as part of the Marrakech Biennale, Morocco (2015). Future shows include Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2025), Scuola Piccola Zattere, Venice (2025), and Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh.