Taus Makhacheva

Taus Makhacheva is an artist who creates video works, sculptures, large-scale installations and performances. Although she grew up in Moscow, she has a strong cultural relationship with the Caucasus and in particular Dagestan, something that has shaped her practice. Referring to specific contexts, such as the collection accumulated by the Dagestan Museum of Fine Art, the artist touches upon broader issues related to the notion of power, individual and collective memory, amnesia and cultural change, questioning her own legitimacy and her ability to address political problems and oppose cultural clichés and stereotypes. From this perspective, Makhacheva also deals with popular tropes in tales from the Caucasus region, such as the fear of losing one’s nose, which she treats both critically and with humour, striving to reconcile the local with the global and tradition with progress, as well as exploring the limits of identification within a cultural or physical landscape.

Makhacheva has exhibited her work several times at M HKA. Her key installation Tightrope (2015) was jointly acquired by M HKA and the Van Abbemuseum in 2015, followed by further acquisitions. In 2021, she was part of the large research exhibition at M HKA entitled EURASIA − A Landscape of Mutability.