Salome Chigilashvili - Belly Hair
11 February - 19 March, 2023
Artbeat, 14, Pavle Ingorokva str., Tbilisi, Georgia
Artbeat presents Salome Chigilashvili's first solo exhibition, "Belly Hair".
Salome Chigilashvili explores the question of resistance against time through her personal experiences, and she tries to connect between events in different times. "Belly Hair" is a specific metaphor that implicitly refers to the existential form of being and its resistance, where the same event and thing repeats and returns to itself.
Belly hair is the first original and consequential material a human carries, first hair which enables her to be born in a given context. After a certain time, the hair is cut as if to derange the context but then the hair grows back again. This is a process of irreversible circulation.
As a bearer of life energy, hair keeps its genetic information through self-renewal function, and its unceasing existence is a continuous process of self-reflection. In the exhibition we see hair-like plaster objects under the cube-shaped frames, which represent restriction in the cyclic turn of cosmogonic structure. Embroidered forms on fabric are in constant movement to one another and create the impression of dynamic resistance. As if at one place, this movement is interrupted, but at another continues with the instinct of extension.
One of the artworks shown in the exhibition is an ice object, which is melting in the fireplace built in the exhibition hall. The fireplace represents the hearth, where the contexts of everyday life are united. Ice can be understood as a substance of potential transformation. As if it absorbs given matter and transforms from one state to another. In this process, there is a chance that things can break from the time cycle and become free from eternal repetition, but at the same time, every change leaves its original trace. This process allows us to observe whether things change in time, whether they can break from the turning cycle of time and whether they can reproduce themselves on an information scale.
Salome Chigilashvili is Georgian visual artist, born in 1996 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She graduated from Visual Arts, Architecture & Design School – VA[A]DS of Free University of Tbilisi.
She is a multimedia artist, works in different mediums including sculpture, painting, found objects. As a material she often uses threads and plaster.
Selected exhibition:
2022 - “All Songs Die As Soon As They Are Forgotten”, Artbeat, Tbilisi, Georgia; “XX-XXI, Georgian Art from Private Collections”, D. Shevardnadze National Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2021 - Aaahhh!!! Paris Internationale Art Fair, presented by Artbeat, Paris, France; “Distant Symphony” by ROOMS STUDIO, Emma Scully Gallery, New York, USA; “Someplace Else”, in collaboration with ROOMS STUDIO, Bazaleti Village, Georgia; 2020 - “Nine Lipped Goddess”, Artbeat , Tbilisi, Georgia; “Essential Rituals”, 4710 Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2019 - “Crosscurrents”, Window Project Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; “Story As A Woven Carpet”, 68 Projects Gallery, Berlin, Germany; “Tabula Rasa”, Kunsthalle Tbilisi, Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia; “Stitching Stones”, collaboration with Situationist, Somerset House, London, England; “Artisterium”, Tbilisi 11th International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Georgian National Museum ,Tbilisi History Museum (Karvasla), Tbilisi, Georgia;2018 - Oxygen Tbilisi_No Fair, Stamba D Block, Tbilisi, Georgia; “All And Everything”, Artarea Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia.