Raising his young daughter while navigating life as an immigrant, Nima Nikakhlagh’s work is infused with intentionality toward the human condition and how power inscribes itself within human relations, where violence and melancholy often permeate the experience. Nima, who arrived in the United States from Iran in 2014, is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York and Massachusetts, working with performance art, photography, video, text, and poetry. His practice examines power dynamics and resistance through an embodied and poetic approach. Most of his work engages performativity, treating performance not only as a visual form but as a socio-political practice grounded in lived, relational experience. His work frequently employs open-ended situational orchestration and provocation—interrupting daily life—as mechanisms for the audience’s internalization of his concepts; the real action takes place within the consciousness of the viewer, where choice, contingency, and ethical, psychological tensions unfold. In his words, “The lasting image of a work of art that also contains ‘sensory experience’ is no longer just an image, but a lived moment that is experiential and visceral.” Nima’s works have been presented in Iran, Europe, Canada, and the United States. He is the recipient of the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art 2023–2024 Award and recently published his latest artist’s book, A MANUAL FOR THE WORLD’S TOUGHEST PERFORMANCES.