Interview with ArtFrankly;

This week we chat with Nina Mdivani, an independent curator and writer, originally from Tbilisi, Georgia. Nina received her undergraduate degree from Tbilisi State University and Mount Holyoke College in International Relations and Gender Studies. After graduating from college, through the Columbia University initiative, Nina coordinated various social programs that helped low-income […]

Narratives of Otherness: Metaphysics, Georgian Contemporary Art and Its Few Strands

A positive affirmation of local values later turned into contempt for outsiders. Mario Vargas Llosa, “Nationalism and Utopia” What is darkness without light? Akutagawa Ryonoske,“Life of a Fool” What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to […]

Panel “Eastern European Art & the Age of Extremity,” March 29, 2020 @Kunstraum

On March 29, 2020 Kunstraum held an online panel “Eastern European Art & the Age of Extremity,” moderated by me, 2019-2020 Curator-in-Residence at Kunstraum and part of programming for my ongoing exhibition “New York Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness Part 2.” The panel focused on art produced in Eastern Europe and the various dynamics associated with […]

Two Aesthetics of Apocalypse

Recently as I was doing research on narrative structures I came across “The Imagination of Disaster,” 1965 essay by Susan Sontag, in which she eerily describes our collective traumatic state of mind as COVID-19 roams the world and reaps its victims. Thesis of Sontag’s essay is that science fiction films of 1960s succeeded with the […]

Tezi Gabunia: Playing with Our Heads

Tezi Gabunia’s multimedia installation “BREAKING NEWS: Flooding of the Louvre,“ will be presented at Armory Show in the Focus section this March, thus becoming the first work of an emerging contemporary Georgian artist to be showcased at this prestigious art forum. As he was preparing for this exhibition, I spoke to Gabunia and this is […]

Interview with Art Spiel

Nina Mdivani – NY Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness Part I & II In Dialogue with Nina Mdivani on her curatorial project at Kunstraum LLC (Brooklyn) and The Assembly Room (LES) Rusudan Khizanishvili, Producing The New Body 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 31.49 x 27.55 inches Nina Mdivani is an independent curator, art writer, and current Curator-in-Residence […]

Symbology of Anna Valdez

It was my pleasure to meet wonderful Bay-area based artist Anna Valdez and work on the essay for this book as well as to be part of the artist talk and exhibition opening at Hashimoto Contemporary, New York on October 5, 2019. The second essay from this book was authored by Chad Alligood. The book […]