Tamuna Chabashvili

Tamuna Chabashvili (b. in 1978, Tbilisi) is a visual artist based in Amsterdam and Tbilisi. She has obtained her BA in Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In 2003, she co-founded artists’ initiative ‘Public Space With A Roof’ (PSWAR) in Amsterdam, which functioned as a project space until 2007. PSWAR has been producing large-scale research projects, blurring the borders between various roles artists are assumed to take today: artists-as-activists, artists-as-producers, or artist-as-curators. Since 2008, PSWAR projects have been shown internationally, in places such as: Frederick Kiesler Foundation in Vienna, Austria; Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.

Her individual practice revolves around the topic of archives and traces. Mapping personal stories, memories, and questions into visual and tactile narratives, are the means for her to interpret and question the inheritance of the past and find ways in which ‘counter-memories’ or ‘counter-stories’ can embody the space of silence.Textile often functions as a grid in her works. Each new project is an opportunity for her to closely work with vulnerable groups that mostly remain underrepresented or overlooked. Such encounters help her to broaden the context in which the retracing of embodied memories can be interpreted and positioned today.

In 2014, she conducted her first research project ‘Supra of Her Own’ together with the anthropologist Agnieszka Dudrak, on gender-based violence against women in Georgia. The selection from this work was shown at the Kiev Biennale and the parallel program of the 14th Istanbul Biennale, at Kuad Gallery. Her project ‘The Book of Patterns’ focusing on the representation of ‘everyday life’ of women at the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi was included in the Biennial of Contemporary Textile Art in Portugal ‘Contextile’ in 2018. Her recent projects on historical archives include ‘The Corridors of Conflict. Abkhazia 1989-1995’ initiated by Swisspeace and Conciliation Resources and ‘Missing Monument’ commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Georgia.

For additional information on the projects of Public Space With A Roof you can visit:
www.pswar.org