Christi Knak Tschaikowskaja, Artist

Christi Knak Tschaikowskaja (born in 1990 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, raised in Nettetal, Germany) lives and works in Düsseldorf. Christi is a painter, performance artist and filmmaker, currently studying in Prof. Kati Heck’s class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Previously, Christi completed her degree with a diploma at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. For the past four years, Christi has been working with the mixed-abled performance collective creature freedom: and created a _collective-touch project in a shared flat for people with dementia. Alongside her performative gestures, her drawings and paintings emerge as a kind of body scores. Her works emerge as an internalisation and externalisation of human relationships, which are understood in their creature-like form and depicted as such. Social dynamics take on animal forms, whereby the animal here is one that suffers under human oppression. Overall, organic patterns of attraction are depicted: masses, movements, and tenderness in between. Her most recent performances include barrier [creature freedom as utopia], Rheintreppe Düsseldorf, Oecophyllas gemeinsamer Faden, Malkasten Kunstverein, Düsseldorf, and the performance in public space Wasserwesen, Kunstpalast Düsseldorf as part of the GROSSEN. In 2025, Christi was awarded the travel grant from the Düsseldorf Art Association and the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf. In 2021, the performance Queer fashion show the manifold gender was developed as a collective project and presented at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Christi'sperformances have been supported by the Düsseldorf Cultural Office, the Cologne Cultural Office, the NRW Diversity Fund, the Düsseldorf Arts Commission and the DaKu Fund.

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