Nadya Sayapina

Born 1989 in Minsk/Belarus.

Nadya Sayapina is a Warsaw-based artist. Sayapina is living in exile since 2020 due to political persecution in Belarus.

She studied Arts and Crafts at the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts (BA), Minsk, (2011) and holds a Master of Arts in Art Studies at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk, (2012).

Working in socially engaged art, Nadya Sayapina explores migration, collective memory, identity, and trauma through installation, multimedia, performance, objects, and drawing. She positions herself as a mediator, collaborating with communities and individuals through interviews, archival research, and shared creative processes.

Working as an interdisciplinary freelance artist, Sayapina served as a guest lecturer at the HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg from (2021-2022), and worked as set designer for King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, a production by Belarus Free Theatre presented at the Barbican Centre in (2023).

Recent projects include: We Were Human We Longed for Beauty, installation, Narracje #16 festival, Gdańsk, (2025); Pokuć project, Marszałkowska|18, Warsaw, (2024); Letter to Mom, multipart project, solo shows at CO³, Cologne, (2024) and Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv, (2021); X Letters, video series, PerspAKTIV residency, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Stuttgart, (2023); Testimony and Überall und nirgendwo (group exhibitions), Neues Museum Nürnberg, (2024).

Sayapina received, among other things, fellowships and grants by the Goethe Institute, Leipzig, (2022); CEC Artslink, Berlin, (2022) and the Martin Roth Initiative, (2021).