About me
I am Talia Nizarane, an emergent multidisciplinary artist and artistic researcher with a socially engaged practice. My work explores themes of migration, climate justice, and mobility inequality, particularly in relation to the Global South, leveraging public programming and community co-creation as tools for structural change, advocacy, and policy influence.
I have delivered projects in collaboration with grassroots communities and institutions worldwide, combining systems thinking with social innovation.
​
Upcoming:
2027 – Group show, Skövde Art Museum, Sweden.
2026 – Group show, hARTslane Gallery, South London, UK.
​​
Solo and Two-Person Shows:
2025 –​ Locked In, Left Out, several venues inc. the Terrace Dining Room at Westminster Parliament**, the Lewisham Arthouse, and the Gallery at the Brixton Library, South London, UK.
2023 – Self-Preservation**, part of RCA2023, The Truman Brewery, London, UK.
2022 – The Road Not Taken*, Yamanaka Suplex Studio Annex MINE, Osaka, Japan.
2021 – Cleaning Service, Schaufenster Dreiviertel, Bern, Switzerland.
2020 – UNWINNABLE, XPO Gallery, Enschede, Netherlands.
2019 – Dificultades Iniciales*, 13th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba.​
* Two-Person Show.
** Solo presentation within a group show.
Residencies and Awards:
2024 – Art Residency at PROGR Foundation, Bern, Switzerland. (One month, £250)
2024/5 – Seed Funding as part of Creative Agents of Change, In Place of War, London, UK and online. (£1,000)
2022/3 – Kyoto Award by the Kyoto City University of Arts, Japan. (Four months, £3,750)
2022 – Academic Award as part of the Continuation Fund, Royal College of Art, London, UK. (£4,000)
2020/3 – Grant from the Learning from Inequality Pilot Project, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. (One year, £12,000)
2020 – Art Residency ARE Holland, Enschede, The Netherlands. (Three months)
​2020 – Beca de Creación El Reino de Este Mundo, Asociación Hermanos Saíz, Havana, Cuba. (£1,000, declined)
2018 – Beca de Creación Antonia Eiriz, Asociación Hermanos Saíz, Havana, Cuba. (One year, £1,000)
​
Education:
2021/3 – MA Contemporary Art Practice, Public Sphere, Royal College of Art, London, UK. I became the first person with my nationality to graduate from this university.
2016/21 – BA Fine Art, University of Arts of Cuba, Havana. I became the first woman in my family to attend university.
Read more about my projects: ​​
Project Name: Cleaning Service
Medium: Performance series, video
Date: 2020-2021
Venue: Public venues in Zurich, during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Supported by a grant from the Learning from Inequality Pilot Project, Zurich University of the Arts.
​
I was studying art in Zurich, supported by a scholarship, where I noticed that the other Latinas at my student accommodation were primarily employed as cleaners. Climate change, systematic oppression, and conflict continue to drive forced migration, whilst language and other barriers reinforce social inequalities, perpetuate class structures, and widen the gender gap. This made me reflect on how female migrants are often reduced to precarious labour in their host countries and inspired me to create the performance series Cleaning Service.
Cleaning Service Exhibition
I was offered to exhibit Cleaning Service in Schaufenster Dreiviertel, Bern, but as the exhibition date approached, Switzerland went into lockdown. The gallerist and I came up with the idea of projecting Cleaning Service as a prerecorded performance in the gallery’s window. The lighting conditions created the illusion that I was performing in real time behind the window, allowing the audience to experience my performance without entering the gallery.
Project Name: Locked In, Left Out: Climate Change and Mobility Inequality in the Global South.
Description: Participatory performances and workshops with underrepresented audiences in South London and Derbyshire, UK.
Date: 2025
Venue: Lewisham Arthouse, London.
Keywords: Privilege, Power, Inheritocracy, Inequality, Social Mobility, Open borders.
​
As part of the workshops, I guided project participants as they scored their gender, race, sexuality, religion, citizenship status, and language proficiency levels to assess their privileges. They noticed how a lower score across multiple categories combines to give certain people less power in society. This exercise is based on the Wheel of Privilege and Power by Sylvia Duckworth and Intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Movement exercise
The next exercise involved asking the participants to imagine that the room’s floor is the world map and position themselves where they were born. After this, I asked them to move across the room to the other countries and territories they have visited, and reflect on their cultural influences, carbon footprints, and their ability, inability, or need to migrate. Based on an exercise by artasfoundation.
Locked In, Left Out was featured in The Sun - 25th April 2025
Project name: Self-Preservation
Medium: Urushi lacquer
Date: 2022-2023
Supported by the Kyoto Award, Kyoto City University of Arts.
%20Talia%20Nizarane%20-%20Self%20Preservation%20(artwork%205%20of%206)_JPG.jpg)
Images of the experimental making process
Includes two reference images from the internet (top left).
The Road Not Taken Exhibition, Yamanaka Suplex Studio, MINE Annex, Osaka, Japan.
“Meeting at Kyoto, Zhou Yiqiao and Talia Nizarane found an instant connection with one another in recognising shared complexities of their backgrounds, which inspired this collaboration. Through living with stereotypes from the gaze of others, they reveal fragile realities that are realised in their works through self-exploration processes that confront issues with their own identities. Recognising their mutual efforts, MINE as a platform created to embody the self, the individual, provides two intimate rooms in one space for the two to claim their individuality and to recognise interrelatedness through exhibiting together.”
Statement by the curatorial team (Ellan Huang & Guo Yugao)
Project Name: A Game of Pretend
Medium: Video
Date: 2022
​
The two wrestling hands in this artwork refer to the cultural shock I have experienced while travelling internationally to pursue creative opportunities. In particular, the use of small talk across different cultures can present difficulties for foreigners and newcomers in terms of integration. I refer to this phenomenon as social choreography and aim to explore it through my work.
Exhibition view at Yamanaka Suplex Studio, MINE Annex, Osaka, Japan.
​Includes a still of the video (left).
Other media recognition
My photography work has been featured in the Museum of Neurodivergent Aesthetics' blog – 14th May 2025
