Taus Makhacheva was born in 1983 in Moscow and lives and works in Makhachkala and Moscow. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London. In 2014 Taus Makhacheva won the Future of Europe prize at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, and in 2012 she received the Innovation Prize, the Russian state award for contemporary art in Moscow, the 'New Generation' category, for her project The Fast and The Furious. 

Selected solo exhibitions include: A Walk, A Dance, A Ritual, Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany (2014) and Story Demands to be Continued, Republic of Dagestan Union of Artists, Makhachkala, Russia (2013).

Selected group exhibitions include: Love me, Love me not, Collateral exhibition, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Re: emerge – Towards a New Cultural Cartography, Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); City States – Makhachkala, Topography of Masculinity, 7th Liverpool Biennial, (2012); Rewriting Worlds, ArtPlay Сentre, The Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, (2011); Greater Caucasus, PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, Perm (2011); Affirmative Action (Mimesis), Laura Bulian Gallery, Milan  (2011); Practice for Everyday Life, Calvert 22, London (2011); and History of Russian Video Art, Volume 3, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010).