Until 23 May 2026, NIKA Project Space is holding Follow the Snail, a solo exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Nazilya Nagimova that presents a selection of recent works and site-responsive installations. The show reflects the artist’s ongoing exploration of memory, migration, and the shifting meanings of home.
At the heart of the project is Nagimova’s distinctive engagement with felt, a material historically associated with nomadic cultures across Central Asia. For centuries, felt has been used to create clothing, carpets, and portable dwellings, forming an essential part of everyday life for communities whose sense of home was inseparable from movement. In Nagimova’s practice, this material becomes both medium and metaphor. Soft yet resilient, tactile yet structural, it carries cultural memory and ancestral knowledge.
The exhibition’s title refers to the quiet persistence of the snail, a creature that carries its home wherever it travels. This image resonates throughout the installation, where spiral forms, layered textiles, and architectural structures evoke ideas of mobility and shelter. Nagimova suggests home is something portable, shaped by personal histories, traditions, and our memories.
One of the key works on display unfolds as a spiral-like installation inspired by jort, a Tatar word derived from the verb “to carry.” The form that recalls nomadic dwellings and sacred structures allows visitors to move around and within the work as if navigating a symbolic shelter. Through these spatial gestures, Nagimova creates an environment that blurs the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and ritual space.
The artist approaches felt as a living substance that responds to time, touch, and the natural world. In some artworks, felt surfaces appear weathered, folded, or partially unravelled, revealing their inner layers. These transformations mirror how traditions shift, adapt, and endure across generations.
About the artist
Nazilya Nagimova (b. 1982, Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan) resides in Münster (Germany). She studied at the School of Arts in Kazan and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Münster. Drawing on her Tatar heritage and the legacy of nomadic cultures, her practice spans installations, textiles, carpets, paintings, and video. Across these mediums, she investigates the relationship between material traditions and contemporary identity, creating works that connect personal narratives with broader histories of migration and belonging.
Nagimova’s art pieces have been featured in various exhibitions and art events, such as Asia Now (NIKA Project Space, Monnaie de Paris, France, 2025); Homo Faber 2024: The Journey of Life (Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, Italy); and documenta fifteen, Davra collective’s public programme (Kassel, Germany, 2022). In 2023, she received the Stiftung Kunstfonds Stipendium.
To get more information about Follow the Snail, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in exploring Hard Like Tears, Soft Like Glass by Shamsa Al Omaira and Urdu Worlds, a group show at Ishara Art Foundation.
