Natalie Maximova is an artist and researcher based in London. Working through moving image, machinima, game engines and post-photographic methods, she investigates the limit-conditions of simulated worlds: the edges, collapses and infrastructural layers where a rendered environment discloses its terms of existence, where its voids open onto sense rather than end it. Her method turns the world's own tools against the appearance they were built to sustain. Emerging from documentary photography, her practice approaches attention as a form of care for what these worlds leave unregarded. At these thresholds, her work reveals the metaphysical and political registers of simulation coinciding.
EDUCATION2021 – MFA, ECAL / École cantonale d'art de Lausanne, Switzerland
2015 – BFA, Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, Russia
SOLO PRESENTATIONS VRAL — Milan Machinima Festival — online, each accompanied by a critical interview
2025 — Awaiting Oblivion, VRAL #104
2023 — The Edge of the World, VRAL #69
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND SCREENINGS 2026 – FILE International Electronic Language Festival, Fiesp Cultural Center, São Paulo, Brazil — upcoming, 18 August – 11 October
2026 – Captured in Code – Virtual Photography, Depot Dortmund, Germany
2026 – Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize, FOTOHOF, Salzburg, Austria
2026 – Athens Digital Art Festival – Meta-Morphosis, Technopolis (Gazi), Athens, Greece
2026 – IF/THEN, Ujazdowski Castle – Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Poland
2026 – Phreaking film night: Does cloud compute (ever) precipitate?, ANNEX by The Koppel Project, London, UK
2025 – Ghosts in the Machine: Experimental Variations on Play, Film Studies Center, University of Chicago, USA
2025 – Peckham Digital Festival, Digital Reel, Copeland Gallery, London, UK
2025 – 39th Image Forum Festival – Cruising in the Realm of the Unreal, Tokyo, Japan
2025 – Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize, ACF London, UK
2025 – Touchstone Independent Film Festival, USA (Best Machinima Short)
2024 – Sickhoes #6 Imitate – Manipulate – Simulate, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, Netherlands
2024 – Now Play This – Liminal: Playing Between Worlds, Somerset House, London, UK
2023 – Electricdreams – Between Fiction and Society II, IULM University, Milan, Italy
2023 – Sickhoes, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, Netherlands
2023 – KO(O)RTS, Sickhouse, Enschede, Netherlands
2021 – There Is No Spoon, Espace Arlaud, Lausanne, Switzerland
2018 – 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, Russia
2016 – The Pleasure of Love – The 56th October Salon, Belgrade City Museum, Serbia
2016 – Hyperborea, Tbilisi Night of Photography, Georgia
2015 – BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from Russia and Beyond, Kühlhaus Berlin, Germany
2015 – Generation Next, 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, Russia
2015 – Boundaries reflection, Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Center, Saint-Petersburg, Russia
2015 – What to say when there is nothing to say, Udarnik, Moscow, Russia
2014 – 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Museum of Moscow, Russia
2014 – Radar, Hilger NEXT Gallery, Vienna, Austria
2014 – Silver camera, Royal Tower of Kazan Station, Moscow, Russia (Grand Prize winner)
AWARDS2025 – Best Machinima Short, Touchstone Independent Film Festival, USA
2025 – Wolf Suschitzky Photography Prize, Austria/UK – shortlisted
2013 – Grand Prize, Silver Camera, Moscow, Russia
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND PRESS
Academic Publications
2024 – Spectator: Journal of Film and Television Criticism, Neoliberalism and/in/as Media, USC School of Cinematic Arts, Vol. 44.2.
2023 – De Mutiis, M., Photographing the game glitch: Between ghost photography and immaterial labour, Philosophy of Photography, vol. 14, pp. 153–170
2023 – Screen Images: In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast, eds. Gerling, Möring, De Mutiis, Kadmos Verlag, Berlin.
Exhibition Catalogues
2018 – 6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (Abracadabra, curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti)
2016 – 56th Belgrade October Salon (The Pleasure of Love, curated by David Elliott)
2015 – BALAGAN!!! Contemporary Art from Russia and Beyond (curated by David Elliott)
2014 – 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (A Time for Dreams, curated by David Elliott)
Magazines and Press
The Spectator (2024), The Guardian (2024), Il Giornale dell'Arte (2022), Camera Austria, no. 152 (2020), Calvert Journal / New East Digital Archive (2016–2021), Bird in Flight (2016, 2018), Fisheye Magazine (2016), FotoRoom (2016), Aint-Bad Magazine (2016), Sleek Magazine (2014), Vice (2013)
COLLECTIONS
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Russia
TEACHING, TALKS & WORKSHOPS 2026 – Off Script: In-Game Photography Workshop, Dortmund, Germany (part of Captured in Code – Virtual Photography)
2025 – Artist talk: From Photography to Machinima, film screening, Polezreniya School, Moscow
SELECTED COLLABORATIONS 2014–2018 – Government House / Haus der Regierung, experimental art film by Herwig Weiser (16mm / 8mm) — production, cinematography. Production photographs published in M. R. Marburger, Weiser, Edition_, Vienna, 2018.
For enquiries or to request a full CV, please get in touch.
© 2026 Natalie Maximova