Follow the Snail: Nazilya Nagimova Brings Felt, Memory, and Migration to Dubai

NIKA Project Space Dubai presents the first UAE solo exhibition by Münster based Tatar artist Nazilya Nagimova, running from 15 February to 4 April 2026.

From 15 February to 4 April 2026, NIKA Project Space hosts Follow the Snail, the first solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates by Nazilya Nagimova. Opening on 14 February, the exhibition brings together newly commissioned works alongside key pieces from earlier projects, united by the artist’s long standing engagement with felt, migration, and the evolving idea of home.

Based in Münster and exhibiting in Dubai for the first time in a solo context, Nagimova draws on her Tatar heritage and family traditions of felting to explore memory, displacement, and belonging. For the artist, felt is both a material and a metaphor, embodying resilience, transformation, and continuity across generations.

A Mobile Idea of Home

At the heart of Follow the Snail is the installation Jort (2025), whose spiral form recalls both the image of a snail and the structure of the traditional yurt. Derived from the Tatar word yörtü (to carry), “jort” refers to home as something portable, adaptable, and historically layered. Though contemporary Tatar homes are no longer mobile, the term preserves a legacy of movement and change.

This idea is further explored in Jort III (2025), a stark black “house” that reflects later stages of Nagimova’s thinking around displacement, loss, and social fragmentation. Together, the white and black jorts form opposing poles, questioning whether home functions as a space of protection or gradual erosion.

Memory, Language, and Vulnerability

The exhibition also features the video work Chulpan – the Mother (2022), first shown at documenta fifteen in Kassel. In this piece, felt is exposed to natural elements, slowly revealing its inner structure and evoking the maternal body as both sheltering and fragile. Texts written in Iske Imla, an obsolete Turkic Tatar script, appear throughout the work, pointing to ruptures in linguistic and cultural continuity.

Across the exhibition, Nagimova reflects on how personal and collective memory shape our relationship to place. Home, in her practice, is not fixed to geography, but reconstructed through rituals, stories, and embodied knowledge.

Felt as Material and Metaphor

Working with a technique learned from her grandparents, Nagimova elevates felt beyond craft into a conceptual language. In works such as Where the Voices End, architectural references from Islamic traditions frame prayer as an inward act, where perception replaces speech and attention becomes a form of devotion.

Throughout Follow the Snail, felt operates as a bridge between manual labour and spiritual reflection. It becomes a tool for negotiating identity in a world marked by mobility, technological mediation, and shifting modes of communication.

A Platform for Global Dialogue

Founded by Veronika Berezina in 2023, NIKA Project Space has established itself as a key platform for artists from the Global South and beyond, with locations in Dubai and Paris. The presentation of Follow the Snail continues the gallery’s commitment to research driven, conceptually rigorous exhibitions that engage with history, philosophy, and contemporary experience.

By presenting Nagimova’s first UAE solo exhibition, the gallery foregrounds questions of migration, heritage, and cultural transmission within an international context.

Exhibition Details

Nazilya Nagimova: Follow the Snail

📍 NIKA Project Space, Dubai

🗓️ 15 February – 4 April 2026

🎉 Opening: 14 February 2026, 4–8 PM