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Dubai: NIKA Project Space hopes to spark empathy through art

Born in St. Petersburg, Veronika Berezina established the NIKA Project Space in Dubai a little over a year ago — following a successful stint in the City of Gold, the gallery now has a new outpost in Paris

Having grown up in the age of environmental anxieties, particularly at a time when the internet has helped create widespread public interest in climate change and climate action, many contemporary artists have taken it upon themselves to confront the challenges of this precarious moment.

No wonder, one can feel the impact of the looming planetary crisis while browsing through Christiane Peschek’s multi-sensory exhibition that has currently filled the two-storey NIKA Project Space in Al Quoz (on view till January 11, 2025). In what the gallery describes as a “large-scale immersive takeover” of its space, Peschek’s urgently-titled Fever is her first solo effort in the UAE and blends sound, scent, heat, glass-blown sculpture, artificial intelligence (AI)-inspired portraits and other visual images to explore the interconnected and yet, dichotomous concept of the geographical and corporeal fever dreams.

“Designing an exhibition around ‘fever’— the rising heat of both body and planet — feels especially urgent in a region on the frontlines of climate extremes. Approaching it from a Global South perspective adds a critical layer to my worldview. I want visitors to feel the intensity of these insights, drawn from the region’s culture, the climate crisis, digital realms, and a future-driven mindset,” says Peschek, who is based in Vienna and worked in Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Desert for this project, building on her previous research on deserts, mythology and healing/care cultures. “Working in the UAE has been a transformative experience,” she tells wknd. “The environment, starkly different from what I’ve known, feels both confronting and captivating. Here, I’ve tapped into a well of cultural wisdom and resilience that pushed me to create this new body of work.” Through her latest oeuvre, the artist also probes the practicality and spirituality of desert landscapes and its boundless literatures as well as cultural contradictions. One of her works is based on local myths around the protective desert snakes and the story of Ouroboros, the serpent in Greek mythology whose eating of its own tail serves as a metaphor for the eternal cycle of life, death and rebirth. In Fever, the act symbolises today’s environmental toxicity.

Veronika Berezina, founder of NIKA Project Space, says that she launched the gallery in Dubai last year to provide a platform for critical dialogue on contemporary issues and foster a sense of philosophical inquiry and artistic experimentation, all through the lens of young and dynamic artists like Peschek from across the globe.

Formally trained as a lawyer, Berezina says that she wants to actively support research and experimentation in her new role as a gallerist. Peschek, for example, was the third artist to be invited to be a part of the NIKA Project Space research programme.

Previously, at NIKA Project Space, the London-based artist Nika Neelova had investigated the ancient marine life that once inhabited Buhais Geology Park and the Jebel Buhais archaeological site in Al Madam Plain (Sharjah, UAE). And artist Katya Muromtseva interviewed women migrants in Dubai, whose profoundly personal stories laid the foundation for her solo show at the gallery.

“I see NIKA’s role as expanding one’s worldview and encouraging empathy through art. With this in mind, our residency programme, which was launched with the opening of the gallery in 2023, invites artists to participate in research trips in the region to discover the nuances of local societies and local life,” Berezina tells wknd. She admits that Dubai’s vibrant art scene has inspired her to work more closely with local curators, cultural practitioners and artists, establishing deeper connections to the regional context and promoting the exchange of ideas and cross-cultural conversations. “We are now working with the Emirati artist Fatma Al Ali. We showed her works in Paris at MENART Fair in September 2023, and she participated in a duo show, Ephemeral Structures, where her newly commissioned work by NIKA Project Space was presented alongside Nika Neelova’s art,” explains Berezina.

One of the main objectives of NIKA Project Space is to champion feminist voices and in order to honour this mission, the gallery has already collaborated with several women artists over the past year, including Dalia Khalife, Sara Niroobakhsh, Lilia Ziamou, Katya Muromtseva, Mona Ayyash, Peschek and most recently, Mirna Bamieh. Berezina elaborates, “I feel like there is the need for the female artists to have more access for gallery representation and provide more opportunities for them to showcase their works. Though talent is not about gender, there has been a disbalance in male/female representation for some time.”

Barely more than a year old in Dubai, the NIKA Project Space has recently expanded its footprint in the European market, with the opening of an outpost in Paris. The new chapter marks an “important step” for its founder. “The Paris space corresponds with our gallery’s ongoing commitment to highlighting internationally the work and concepts of artists and curators from usually overlooked regions of the world, and create a bridge between Paris and Dubai programmes, facilitating rich exchanges and dialogues, and help to amplify the practices of artists we connect with and provide opportunities for their voices to be heard,” says Berezina, who was born in St.Petersburg and started out as an art collector initially before relocating to Dubai in 2022 to pursue her goal of pursuing a full-fledged career in the art world.

The NIKA Project Space in Paris, located in the Komunuma arts district, threw open its doors to art lovers last month with an exhibition featuring the works of Palestinian artist Mirna Bamieh. Through the use of a well-appointed pantry and fermented ingredients, Bamieh’s ongoing Sour Things reflects on displacement and the uprooting of the Palestinian experience. “These works deal with grief, pain, and processing the uncontrollable. They invite reflection and create empathetic spaces. The Sour Things series has always been about processing big topics without providing answers, offering internal, psychic spaces of empathy,” says Bamieh, who is the founder of the Palestine Hosting Society, a live art project and platform for interaction she founded in 2018 to collect Palestinian recipes on the verge of disappearing. Another iteration of the Sour Things — called Sour Things: The Kitchen — was previously exhibited at the NIKA Project Space, before the Paris showcase.

For Berezina, while the Paris space represents infinite potential, Dubai will always be the place for opportunities in sparking new conversations and as being the birthplace of NIKA Project Space. “I find Dubai to be an interesting city located at the crossroads of different cultures while being open-minded towards new concepts, people, and projects,” she says. “I admire its cosmopolitan character.”

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