The artist Nadja Buttendorf pursues a fundamentally participatory and interactive artistic practice in all of her works, often inviting visitors in various ways into her narrative and thematic worlds. Her works encompass an interconnected network of video series, workshop performances, jewelry objects, garments, and social media activities. They mostly interrogate current norms and codes of gender constructions and value creation mechanisms of the human body in our digital and capitalist society. The dissemination of knowledge and its transmission as a form of self-empowerment equally characterize all of her works. Nadja Buttendorf deliberately employs DIY as a widespread online aesthetic, both as a strategy of access and as a form of resistance against a neoliberal work ethic.
The works and workshops of Nadja Buttendorf were shown at the HKW Berlin, Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund, Kunsthalle Bremen, Kampnagel Hamburg, La Gaîté Lyrique Paris, MU Eindhoven, neue Gesellschaft bildende Kunst Berlin, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Musem der bildenden Künste Leipzig, Halle 14 - Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, Goethe-Institute Buenos Aires, D21 Leipzig and the panke.gallery Berlin. She has also given lecture performances at Re:publica, the CCC, Creamcake and the nGbK Berlin. Nadja Buttendorf is a trained goldsmith and studied fine arts at the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle (Saale).