Culture as Strategy of Survival, presented at Ria Keburia Residency Program, November 28,2022 Lecture starts with a short intro about some projects I did and moves on to discuss definition on current definitions of trauma taking a few representatives of Georgian visual tradition as examples of how trauma could be observed within the artistic paradigm.
In January-December 2021 in collaboration with the Georgian Association in the USA I have profiled twelve Georgian women artists. Some of these interviews involved recording the living artists, some of them resulted conversations with art historians specializing in these historical women.
- Natela Grigalashvili
- Rusudan Khizanishvili
- Vera Pagava
- Elene Akhvlediani
- Tamara Abakelia
- Natela Iankoshvili
- Ema Lalaeva-Ediberidze
- Gayane Khachaturian
- Esma Oniani
- Keti Kapanadze
- Tamara Kvesitadze
- Mariam Natroshvili
Some of them are known to the wider audience, while some deserve to be rediscovered. Each presentation includes interviews with experts or artists followed by a Q&A session.
You can watch recordings of each event on YouTube and below:
Meeting One: Natela Grigalashvili & Rusudan Khizanishvili Conversation between pioneering Georgian photographer Natela Grigalashvili and distinguished figurative artist Rusudan Khizanaishvili. Both interviewed by Nina Mdivani in April 2021.
Meeting Two. July 2021. Vera Pagava. Conversation between Paris-based Elisso Tarassachvili, president, Anna Tarassachvili, collection manager and project manager of the Cultural Association Vera Pagava (Association Culturelle Vera Pagava – AC/VP) and curator Nina Mdivani. Recorded May 2021.
Meeting Three. September 2021. Elene Akhvlediani. Conversation between Nino Khundadze, Chief Curator of New and Contemporary Art Collections at the Georgian National Museum and curator Nina Mdivani. The third episode features Elene Akhvlediani (1901-1975), an iconic representative of Georgian art.
Meeting Four. October 2021. Tamar Abakelia and Natela Iakoshvili. Presentation about Tamar Abakelia. Conversation between British artist and art critic Alexander Adams and curator Nina Mdivani about Georgian painter Natela Iankoshvili (1918-2008). Recorded in July 2021.
Meeting Five. November 2021.Ema Lalaeva-Ediberidze and Gayane Khachaturian. Conversation with researcher and writer Kristine Darchia about Ema (Lali) Lalaeva-Ediberidze (1904-1991). Recorded summer 2021. And a conversation with researcher and writer Ketevan Tomaradze about Gayane Khachaturian (1942-2009).
Meeting Six. December 2021.Esma Oniani and Keti Kapanadze. Conversation between Nina Mdivani and Tbilisi-based researcher Tornike Kobiashvili about painter and poet Esma Oniani (1938-1999). And interview with Georgian conceptual artist Keti Kapanadze (b.1962) where she talks about her practice and experience of being the first conceptual female artist in 1990s in Tbilisi.
Meeting Seven. January 2022.Tamara Kvesitadze and Mariam Natroshvili Conversation between Nina Mdivani and Tamara Kvesitadze (b.1968), well-known multimedia artist, famous for her kinetic sculptures. And interview with Georgian conceptual and digital artist Mariam Natroshvili (b.1984) discussing her engagement with Georgian script and new digital direction she will be presenting this year at the Venice Biennale.
Summer 2020 For a researcher of contemporary art, this living art form, talking to artists is of vital importance. This is one such recorded conversation in series of informal talks with artists, curators, writers, researchers that combines our thoughts on images, ideas, texts. Here I talk with Jule Korneffel, Germany-born and New York-based artist and we discuss her artistic path, our coping mechanisms, isolation and Emily Dickinson. The dialogue is collaged from different sessions on Zoom we recorded over the pandemic 2020. This Connecting Through Images kept us going.
ninamdivani.com 