Irina Nakhova
Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Irina Nakhova: Moscow Diary, opening on Wednesday, April 2nd, 6-8pm, at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704 (corner of Madison Avenue). The exhibition will run through May 17th, 2014. Gallery hours are 11am-6pm, Tuesday through Saturday, and by appointment.
Irina Nakhova (b. 1955), an installation artist and academically trained painter, shares her home and studio between Moscow and New Jersey. She graduated from the Moscow Institute of Graphic Arts in 1978 and is a member of the unofficial artists’ group, now known as the Moscow Conceptual School. She has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1986. Nakhova achieved wide acclaim for Rooms (1983-7), the first "total installation" in Russia.
Nakhova has been selected to represent Russia in the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015, where she will be the first woman to have a solo exhibition in the history of the Russian Pavilion. In 2013, she won Russia’s prestigious Kandinsky Prize for Project of the Year.
Moscow Diary will feature the installation Without a Title, exhibited at last year’s Kandinsky Prize, and shown for the first time in the United Sates. This installation uses manipulated photographs in a variety of media from Nakhova’s personal and family archive that dates from the 1920’s to the present. Also featured are Skins (2009), the photo-sculptures Pillows (1997) and several paintings from the installation Renovation (2012).
Nakhova has had over 30 solo exhibitions in North America, Europe, and Russia. She taught contemporary art at Wayne State University in Detroit (MI), Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (PA), and the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, Austria. Her artwork is in museums and private collections in France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.