Tacit Tongues

NIKA Project Space is pleased to present Tacit Tongues, a group exhibition curated by Timur Zolotoev, featuring works by Buryat and Mongolian artists Mila Balzhieva, Natalia Papaeva, and Nomin Zezegmaa, alongside the Berlin-based collective Slavs and Tatars.

Opening on 25 May 2025 at NIKA’s Paris space, Tacit Tongues brings together 15 works – spanning painting, textile, video, mixed media, performance and installation – that examine the fragility and resilience of language in preserving cultural memory, reclaiming identities, and disrupting established power relations.

The exhibition responds to a legacy of adaptation and erasure experienced by cultures and languages throughout the 20th century—particularly in Mongolia and the culturally kindred Republic of Buryatia in Eastern Siberia. Informed by tacit knowledge and Indigenous approaches to storytelling, the artists use writing and reading as acts of resilience, resisting epistemic violence while offering alternative ways of understanding the world.