Nina Backman’s artistic practice explores art as a shared, participatory experience that fosters connection, awareness, and collective responsibility. Her work brings people together through embodied encounters that invite reflection, listening, and action in response to pressing social and environmental challenges.
Silence Meal is a performative dining experience centered on shared silence. Participants gather around a table and share a meal without verbal communication, creating a space for deep presence, attentiveness, and non-verbal exchange. The work encourages reflection on how we relate to one another, to food, and to the environment, offering an alternative model for social interaction based on care, listening, and mutual respect.
Alongside Silence Meal, Backman presents the Gift Series, a long-term artistic and environmental initiative based on acts of giving: planting trees, sharing knowledge, and connecting people across communities. The Gift Series functions both as a social artwork and as a concrete environmental action. Tree planting becomes a symbolic and practical gesture of responsibility toward future generations, while workshops, conversations, and shared activities build networks of learning, collaboration, and ecological awareness.
Together, Silence Meal and the Gift Series create a platform for participatory engagement.These initiatives invite diverse audiences to take part in meaningful actions that bridge art, ecology, and everyday life, fostering a sense of shared ownership and agency in shaping a more sustainable and connected society.
Nina Backman is a Finnish-born, Berlin-based artist and curator whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, installation, and socially engaged art. She is the founder of the Silence Project, which explores the intersections of silence, communication, and shared human experience. She graduated from the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in 2000.
Backman’s practice also extends into ecological interventions, most notably her ongoing tree-planting initiative A Million Trees to Finland, which merges art, community participation, and environmental restoration. By combining contemplative social rituals with tangible acts of ecological care, her work invites audiences to slow down, listen, and engage with both one another and the natural world.
Her work is held in both public and private collections, including the Roosen Trinks Collection in Germany and the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki. She has exhibited internationally at venues such as Nordic House in Iceland, West Bund Art Center in Shanghai, Punkt Ø Galleri F 15 in Norway, Malmö Museum in Sweden, her performative work has been shown in the venues such the Berliner Festspiele, Flagey in Brussels, Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin, and Punkt Ø Galleri F 15 in Norway. Her environmental tree events have been featured in leading Finnish museums, including Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Amos Rex, Taidehalli, Turku Art Museum, EMMA - Espoo Museum of Modern Art and the Serlachius Museums among others.
In 2023, the Silence Project was awarded the title of Most Innovative Social Art Initiative in Europe by the European Enterprise Awards.