Artist, Berlin

Jan Nikolai Nelles is a multi-disciplinary artist. His artistic practise oscillates between different fields such as visual and media art, documentary filmmaking and cultural activism. He graduated from Offenbach University of Art and Design in 2011. In the past he founded an independent ‘project space’ in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and co-founded a photography magazine.

Since 2009 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles work together as a collective, based in Berlin. Their pieces deal with issues arising through hegemonic and neo-colonial power structures and representations between the Global South and North as well as with the various facets of war and its aftermath. The works interfere in social infrastructures by misbehaviour performances or challenges institutions. The collective pursues a critical re-evaluation of actual cultural commons, the power of representation through material objects of other cultures, their digital image as well as the concepts of heritage and identity politics.

Their works got granted by several institutions like Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Goethe-Institut, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), German Federal Foreign Office and European Cultural Foundation (ECF).