Tbilisi Art Fair 2019

Presented artists: Anna K.E., Keti Kapanadze,  Maia Naveriani, Gvantsa Jishkariani, Maya Sumbadze, Tamar Chaduneli, Tamo Jugeli, Nata Sopromadze and Sopho Chkhikvadze

For Tbilisi Art Fair 2019 Project ArtBeat is proud to present a group show of Georgian artists from different generations uniting diverse artistic practices spanning from painting, photography, drawing and installation. Keti Kapanadze with her conceptual installations and Maia Naveriani with her intuitive drawings have been investigating their identity as female artists in both Soviet and post-Soviet Georgia. We are pleased to present for the first time in our booth a self-taught abstract painter Tamo Jugeli and New York based Anna KE who represents Georgia at the 58th Venice Biennale. Tamar Chaduneli’s ornaments shown emulate forms and constructions of everyday object design and architecture from memory and imagination. Two small portraits by Sopho Chkhikvadze look as mystical cuts from a real life. Jishkariani’s tapestry is a symbol how traditions influence our taste and everyday life.


Tamar Chaduneli is Georgian visual artist, born in 1991 in Rustavi, Georgia. She graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of arts - Media art faculty in 2013 and the same year studied at non formal master program of mediation at Center of Contemporary Art - Tbilisi (CCA-T). In 2017 started school at Staatliche Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste - Staedelschule at Willem de Rooij class. In 2016 Tamar was invited in Dusseldorf, Germany and in 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine at an artist in residency programs. Together with group ‘block 21’ Tamar is co-founder of artist in residency program in Rustavi. Opening of the residency space was part of Tbilisi Triennial program.

On conceptual bases her work can be characterized by combination of different media such as sculpture, painting, drawing, video game, animation, procedural installations. Her works investigate language of visual culture and image production. Emulating forms and constructions of everyday object design and architecture from memory and imagination point towards impact specific to surfeit of images we see all around us.

Her recent collaborations with craftsmen confront the complexity of digital and technological development in relation to traditional techniques and process of redefining human condition. Tamars work addresses the question of images contributing to construction of identity and how identities are subsumed into larger political and cultural structures.


Sopho Chkhikvadze mainly works in painting. Her artworks are similar to cuts from real life or films. Sometimes Sopho’s characters are represented in the background of desolate landscape, vast field or sea. This brings mystic and surrealistic mood into the painting. Signs and symbols are often exposed in Chkhikvadze’s paintings, playing an important role in image interpretation.


Gvantsa Jishkariani is based in Tbilisi, Georgia. After studying at Tbilisi State Academy of Art (BA in Architecture) she gained an Informal MA in Inclusive Mediation at Center of Contemporary Art - Tbilisi. In 2017, she won Tsinandali Award in visual arts.

Jishkariani is an artist whose primary medium is installation. Her work addresses first and foremost the topics of expectations, beliefs and taste. The temporary nature of the paradox that arises when searching for concrete definitions of right and wrong, east and west, old and new is one of her subjects of interest. Gvantsa’s art is inspired by serendipity and intuition. She starts each work with preconceived composition and idea, but mostly without preliminary sketches. She wonders how ancient superstitions, social media and surrounding trashy images influence on everyday life; how emotions, memories, views and personality is created.

Since 2014 she, with ten other female artists is part of an art group New Collective. In 2017, Jishkariani founded Patara Gallery in an underpass shop in Tbilisi, which is a space for experimental, denied or not-yet-seen art and for game-changing young artists. In 2018 Gvantsa co-founded a The Why Not Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia.


Tamo Jugeli is a young, Georgian emerging artist born in 1994. During 2013-2017 she studied Journalism at David Aghmashenebeli University of Georgia and only started painting after. Soon she became mentored by internationally renowned artist and writer, Gia Edzgveradze.

Jugeli acknowledges her main aim in creativity to be adapting and expressing in visual arts Helene Cixous’ concept – ‘L’ecriture feminine', unified space/spirit of feminine new vitality expressed in her paintings; where geometric forms and figures representing meta-physics are merging into exploding variety of twisted spaces, many planes in different perspectives and numerous emotional layers. Her large mixed media canvases but also round and oval shaped smaller formats are a good visualisation of her practice’s main aim.

Selected solo and group exhibitions:
2019 - Tbilisi Art Fair 2019, Tbilisi, Georgia; ‘You Know What?! I don't Have a Good Feeling about Cakes Around Here', Gallery ArtBeat, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2018 - Art-Villa Garikula, artist residency, Garikula, Georgia; Archetypes, Art Up - Street Gallery, Batumi, Georgia.


Keti Kapanadze was born in Tbilisi in 1962 . While still a student at the Art Academy in Tbilisi, she produced her first conceptual graphical and photo works in 1983, she was the first conceptual artist in Georgia in Soviet times. Since that time her works are part of the permanent exhibition of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the USSR at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, USA. 
From 1990 to 1999 she worked abroad, supported by scholarships from the Sheffield City Polytechnic, the cca Contemporary Art Center, Glasgow, the BAK Swiss Federal Foundation, Berne, and the IAAB Christoph Merian Stiftung, Basel. She also won First Prize in Photography awarded by the “Open Society Georgia” in 1997 in Tbilisi. She was also one of the editors of the Georgian art magazine “Signal” which she helped launch in 1998. 
In 2000 Keti left her country for Germany, supported by the Baumann Stiftung. In 2001, she was invited as Visiting Professor for the Painting Class a Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. In 2007 she was awarded a scholarship by Cité des Arts in Paris, Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, Paris, France. Her works are in important European collections, such as Staatsgalerie State Stuttgart, and the Museum Bochum. Today, Keti lives and works in Bonn, Germany. 


Maia Naveriani studied under Gia Edzgeveradze before completing her formal training at the Academy of Fine Arts, Tbilisi. Having moved to London, in 1989, she was nominated by Annely Juda Fine Art for the the Vordemberger Gildewart Foundation international prize in 1999, which she won.

Since then she has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in both public and commercial spaces including Fordham Gallery, Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London; Neues Kunstforum, Cologne; Museum Wiesbaden; Museum Bochum; Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund; Netwerk, Aalst; Cirius Art Centre, Cork; Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York and CoBra museum, Amsterdam. She also became a member of the group Everything is Alright founded by Gia Edzgeveradze, taking part in many performances in public spaces including Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Museum Bochum, Bochum and Museum Kunst Palatz, Dusseldorf. Maia Naveriani is represented in Germany by Galerie Voss, Dusseldorf. 
The artist lives and works in Tbilisi and London.


Natalia Sopromadze is a Tbilisi based Georgian photographer. After her graduation from the School of Documentary Photography - Sepia in 2007 she founded a photo studio called Bina and in 2009, together with her friends, she created a non-commercial, first Georgian online magazine Beat about photography and contemporary art, based in the same studio. In 2012 Beat continued its existence in a video format at the online TV station - Artarea. Since 2015 Natalia Sopromadze has been the co-founder and a member of Georgian photo agency ERROR IMAGES.

Natalia Sopromadze discovered that in her photographs, which she has been taking for years, the same images keep appearing: flowers on the graves, grey hair, pools of blood during mountain celebrations, fading plants, cemeteries, lifeless animals left on the roads… She saw the connection between them: each photo speaks about death, without a human. This is how the artist started exploring death with the help of photography.

The reality depicted in the shoots, despite its tragic nature, often creates beauty for Sopromadze and this indefinable mysticism attracts her most of all in this unusual collection. The process of collecting ‘death’ in this from has turned into one big mystery.

Selected solo and group exhibitions: 
2018 - Broken Sea, Tbilisi Photo Festival, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2018 - Elementary Particles: Epigraphs from Georgian Photography, Project ArtBeat Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2018 - In and Out of Reality: Three Centuries of Photographic Image in Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2017 - Secret Life, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2013 - Photo off, Paris, France; 2005 - MZIURI Art Festival, Tbilisi, Georgia.


Maya Sumbadze is a multimedia artist who works in painting, drawing, video, installation, audio, computer graphics. Artist takes inspiration from childhood memories, imprinted in mind images, outside colors, shapes, lighting and sound. Different atmospheres created in everyday life, various works of art and working materials inspire her and dictate the artist how to form a picture. Her works often have strange characters: a girl who has wings and mechanical engine, a printing machine, glittering necklaces pasted to thin paper.

Selected solo and group exhibitions: 
2014 - Untold Stories, Video ArtLab., Europe House, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2013 - Pulsart Restart, East Mission Project, Schio, Italy, 2013 - Take me Out, Artarea Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2012 - Tamada's Tutorial, Gallery Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic; 2011 - On the Way, Center of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, Georgia; 2009 - Born In Georgia, CoBra Museum, Amstelveen, Netherlands.