Jan Nikolai Nelles (b. 1980, Germany) is a multi-disciplinary artist. His artistic practice oscillates between different fields such as visual and media art, documentary film-making and cultural activism. He graduated from Offenbach University of Art and Design in 2011. In the past, he founded an independent project space in Frankfurt/Main, Germany, and co-founded a photography magazine.

Since 2009 Nora Al-Badri and Nikolai Nelles have been working together as a collective, based in Berlin. Their works interfere in social infrastructures through controversial performances and interventions as institutional critique. The collective pursues a critical re-evaluation of actual cultural commons, the power of representation through material objects of other cultures, their digital image as well as the concepts of heritage and identity politics in times of techno heritage.

Nora Al-Badri and Nikolai Nelles work have been on display in various exhibitions and institutions such as the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2013; the Victoria & Albert Museum, Applied Arts Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, 2016; and the 3rd Design Biennial, curated by Anselm Franke, Istanbul, 2016. Their works got granted by several institutions like Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Goethe-Institut, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IfA), the German Federal Foreign Office and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF).