Harald Krejci in conversation with Nika Neelova and Christian Kosmas Mayer
Archaeologies of the Future: Material Memory in Dialogue
29. 7. 25, 7 p.m.
Talk as part of the International Summer Academy 2025
A collaboration between the International Summer Academy and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
British artist Nika Neelova (b. 1984) sees time as a non-linear concept. Her work invites viewers to engage with the existential dimension of human experience in new and unexpected ways. Neelova approaches the world with a sense of poetry, curiosity, and play. She works exclusively with found objects and materials, transforming them into sculptural narratives.
This conversation will explore her artistic practice and her engagement with materials and artefacts that span across geological time.
Christian Kosmas Mayer’s work unfolds at the intersection of technology, memory, and care, grounded in meticulous research. He explores overlooked biographies, lost ecologies, and forgotten artifacts — from permafrost-preserved seeds to mummified bodies — using a wide range of artistic strategies to create new, often unexpected, connections to the present. As a kind of “caretaker” of a polyphonic archive, Mayer brings together people, objects, and non-human entities in a “parliament of things” that reopens suppressed histories. His installations, sculptures, and performances turn archival fragments into immersive, sensory environments where linear time dissolves and alternative futures take shape. Through his practice, Mayer embraces an affirmative biopolitics — allowing life to persist and reemerge in places where dominant narratives have drawn boundaries or erased possibilities. He invites audiences to share in the responsibility for these fragile pasts and the futures they may still hold.
key data
- Venue
- Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Mönchsberg
- Date
- 29. 7. 25, 7 p.m.
Christian Kosmas Mayer
Christian Kosmas Mayer’s cross-media and installation-based works and projects are the result of extensive artistic research and close collaboration with experts from various disciplines. His works aim at a critical re-evaluation of history and the present by placing evolutionary and natural phenomena within a cultural-historical and scientific framework. A central focus of his work is the exploration of questions surrounding archiving and conservation as acts of historical awareness.
Website
Exhibitions
Selected solo exhibitions:
2023 and yet you grow, MAK Center, Los Angeles, CA (US).
2022 The Life Story of Cornelius Johnson's Olympic Oak and Other Matters of Survival, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY (US).
2022 En deux mille cent quatre-vingt-un, le monde entier verra sa fin, Galerie Mezzanin, Geneva (CH).
2019 Aeviternity, mumok – Museum für Moderne Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna.
2019 Unverhofftes Wiedersehen, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin.
2013 Musis et Mulis, Belvedere, Vienna.
Selected group exhibitions:
2024 Heaven can wait, Innsbruck International Biennial of the Arts, Innsbruck (AT)
2023 SHIFT – AI and a future community, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (DE)
2023 On Genes and Human Beings, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum Dresden (DE)
2022 Welcome to Planet B, Ars Electronica Festival, Linz (AT)
2019 Daguerre's Soup, Kunstforum, Vienna
2017 Publishing as an Artistic Toolbox: 1989–2017, Kunsthalle, Vienna
2016 Mit anderen Augen – Das Portrait in der zeitgenössischen Fotografie, Kunstmuseum Bonn (DE)
2015 Flirting with Strangers, 21er Haus, Belvedere, Vienna
2008 Manifesta 7, Rovereto (IT)
2004 26th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (BR)
Prizes:
2022 Falling Walls Breakthroughs in Art and Science, Berlin
2020 Outstanding Artist Award, Ministry for Culture of the Republic of Austria
2011 Kardinal-König-Kunstpreis, Salzburg (AT)
Publications
Voice without Breath, Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden, Sandstein Verlag, Dresden, 2024
First Monograph, Phileas, DISTANZ Verlag, Berlin, 2023
The Book of Record of the Palm Capsule, Mark Pezinger Books, Vienna, 2020
Aeviternity, mumok, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2019
Nika Neelova
The British artist Nika Neelova was born in Moscow in 1987 and has lived and worked in London since 2008. Her sometimes sprawling works transplant us to a world in which time seems out of joint. Neelova wants her viewers to experience the idea of time, which she conceives of as nonlinear, and stimulate their sense for the poetic and playfulness, their inquisitiveness and curiosity.
Neelova works exclusively with found objects and materials. She has a remarkable gift for scrutinizing perfectly ordinary things from a wide variety of perspectives and presenting them in novel ways. Her works are like artifacts that exert a powerful pull, carrying the beholders along on a tide of time; meanwhile, they are very much committed to the present in their formal-aesthetic modesty and the clinical perspective they frame on human civilization.
Website
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions (selection)
2025 Museum der Moderne Salzburg
2024 beghost, Nika Project Space Dubai, UAE
2023 thaw, Noire gallery Turin
2023 Very Like a Whale, Santozeum, Santorini, Greece
2022 ECC Project, Chieri, Turin ECContemporary
2021 SILT, Brighton CCA
2021 [ъ] [ы] [ь] curated by Garage MCA at Voznecensky Tsentr, Moscow
2021 One of Many Fragments. Edward Allington &Nika Neelova, New Art Centre
2019 EVER, The Tetley, Leeds 2018 DRIFTS (there is always ground, even at night), MLF Brussels
Group Exhibitions (selection)
2024 “I miti dell’arte contemporanea” Fondazione Puglisi a Catania
2024 Frieze Sculpture Park with Noire Gallery, curated by Fatos Ustek, London
2024 Ordine e disordine, Noire gallery, Turin
2023 Ephemeral Structures, Nika Project Space, Dubai
2022 (Everything is) Not What it Seems, NITJA Museum, Oslo
2021 Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer 2021
2020 Silence is so accurate, Geukens de Vil, Antwerp
Awards
2021 A_N Artist Bursaries
2020 Arts Council England Grant
