- City
- Toronto
- Booth
- Nathan Phillips Square
Booth 403
Nika Belianina
Nika Belianina is an award-winning filmmaker and a photographic artist based in Toronto with 35+ curated international exhibitions. Her work lives at the intersection of the wonderfully weird and the profoundly human, shaped by a deep love of nature, self-searching and experimentation.
Working physically on location — no AI, no composites — Nika constructs elaborately staged photographs of (mostly) feminine figures in motion that defy physics and logic, blurring the line between photography and painting. Her magical realist worlds, most often meticulous self-portraits, use natural and symbolic environments to give form to longing, resistance, and the desire to exist freely. These themes are shaped by her experience as a Russian living in Canada, acutely attuned to femicide, ecocide, and the erosion of human rights. Figures move through landscapes and interiors that become co-conspirators rather than backdrops; faces are masked or obscured, turning each heroine into an open vessel for the viewer's own imagination. The result is work of painterly precision and poetic photography — images that feel impossible and yet were made by hand, alone, in the real world.
Recent awards include 64th Toronto Outdoor Art Fair - Honorable Mention, 2nd place at the International Photo Awards (IPA) in self-portrait category, and 3rd at the Fine Art Photo Awards (portrait), People’s choice at the Re-focus Awards and Honorable mentions at the ND Awards and Julia Margaret Cameron’s. Select exhibits include a solo show “A Journey of Desire” at the Abbozzo Gallery, group shows at the Elaine Fleck, Woman Made Gallery (Chicago), “Sobre El Rio” at the School of Fine Arts of Peru, Head-On Photo Festival in Australia and multiple Contact Photo Festival showings.
Nika has MA in psychology, is a cat mom and secretly wants to go to space.
Photography & Digital Media
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Sometimes I just want to disappear...
- Year
- 2021
- Dimensions
- 76.20 × 50.80 × 2.54 cm
- Sale Price
- $1,200
