INFORMATION
ABOUT
Nadia Bakhshi (b. 1994)
Nadia Bakhshi is a media artist, theatre maker, singer and performer based in Amsterdam.
Working across video games, sound, performative installation, and immersive environments, she constructs responsive systems in which audiences are not spectators but participants, active agents navigating unstable dramaturgies that quietly shape behaviour.
Trained in theatre and opera directing, Bakhshi approaches space as a dramaturgical system: a place where perception is organised and behaviour choreographed. Over time, she started treating theatre less as a genre and more as a strategy, one that exposes contradictions, aestheticises failure, and foregrounds the tension between spectacle and control. This logic now extends into installation and game-based formats, where meaning emerges through rules, timing, and spatial conditions rather than narrative.
Her work returns to questions of surveillance, dissociation, ritualised participation, and the emotional mechanics of compliance, probing how power operates not only through force, but through care, repetition, architecture, language, and feedback. She is currently moving toward more complex simulation-based installations that merge embodied interaction, spatial design, and game logic, deepening her research into how immersive systems can generate experiences that are at once collective and intimate, spaces where participation feels empowering, yet structurally constrained.
Her work has been presented at WORM Rotterdam, Dutch National Opera, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, and festivals including Opera Forward Festival, O Festival Rotterdam, Synergy Art Festival and ADE. Nadia’s current research focuses on dissociation, identity, and the politics of perception within hybrid performative systems.
EDUCATION
Sandberg Institute
Re:Master Opera MA
2022 — 2024
British Higher School of Art and Design Moscow
New Media in Contemporary Art
2020 — 2022
Russian Academy of Theatre Arts Moscow
Opera/Musical Theatre Directing BA
2013 — 2018
Saint Petersburg Institute of Culture and Arts
Theatre Directing
2011 — 2013
selection
“Toolkit Party”
VR performative installation
group show
Hau Berlin Digital Stage
Berlin, GER
2024
“Cerca Trova”
Video game
solo show, online exhibition
Ges-2 Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, RUS
2023
“nostos”
Live Radio installation WORMxAMARTE at WORM RADIO, Rotterdam, NL
2023
“Birch 0. Op.2”
Installation
Group show commissioned by VAC - foundation at Ges-2 Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, RUS.
2023
“Cerca Trova”
Video game
Group show “Piep, knars, krijs, kraak” by Mokum Kraakt in Het Monument, Amsterdam, NL
2022
“Much water has flown under the bridge since that time”
Solo show
30/7 Gallery , Moscow, RUS
2022
“FISH DAY”
Group show
Performance at Zverev Center of Contemporary Art Moscow, RUS
2021
selection
“Songcycle for a Sad Clown”. Amsterdam Fringe Festival /
Perdu, Amsterdam, NL Commissioned Singer, Performer
2025
“Rites of Play”
Colourscape Festival / Synergy Festival, Amsterdam, NL
Composer, Singer, Performer
2025
“Seeking Solace”
POST Arnhem, Arnhem, NL Comissioned Performer
2024
“Restless Whirls. Soap Opera”
O. Festival, Rotterdam, NL / Sandberg Grand Expo at Door Open Space, Amsterdam, NL
Composer / Director / Performer / Media Artist
2024
“ NEED FOR [SING]: The Last Ensnarlamento”
Opera Forward Festival 2024, Dutch National Opera,
Amsterdam, NL
Opera director
2024
“Birch 0”
Performance at Ges-2 Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, RUS
Media Artist / Director / Dramaturg
2022
”LOG”
Art & Science Opera
CoOPERAtion Lab Art & Science, Moscow Opera House “Novaya Opera”, Rus
Opera director
2021