The artist, filmmaker, and writer Moyra Davey is known for an essayistic practice that brings together text and image in a non-hierarchical way, giving tangible form to processes of observing, depicting, and writing. Davey’s work reflects her fascination with the everyday, what she calls the “raw material of life,” and the various possibilities of expressing it within her own practice. Alongside her interest in her immediate surroundings, her work also reflects her sustained engagement with the literary works of other writers. Her first institutional survey exhibition in Germany, held at n.b.k. in 2025, spanned more than three decades of her practice and presented photography, video, works on paper, and her new artist’s book Portrait Mode. In the 1990s, the artist increasingly turned to depicting objects and environments: she photographically documented what she then called the “analogue world.” She photographed, for instance, a beloved camera shop on Canal Street in New York frequented by Super-8 filmmakers, and piles of old computer parts stored in an industrial building. All of these images show things that were, at the time, on the verge of disappearing or being replaced by new technology. For the n.b.k. Editions program, Davey draws on one of these iconic series, presenting one of its motifs for the first time in a limited edition.

Moyra Davey’s work has recently been shown at, among other venues: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2025); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); Museum of Modern Art, New York (solo, 2022); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2022); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (solo, 2020); Kunsthaus Wien (2018); documenta, Kassel / Athens (2017); mumok, Vienna (solo, 2014). Davey received the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020 and the Scotiabank Photography Award in 2018.