Keti Kapanadze: Hoist the Flag!

Project ArtBeat presents Keti Kapanadze's solo exhibition - Hoist the Flag!

What is love (fragment)

"We may call some artists ‘relentless souls’, not because their souls move their bodies around incessantly, making sure they are constantly active in all situations in life—even if this may to some extent be a necessary part of their relentlessness! The relentless nature of these artistic souls lies in the fact that they never stop asking questions, questions about what kind of life will await us when we finally get there (without having ever agreed to go!). These artists ask questions about life in its future or invisible incarnations, but also about life in its very real, substantial manifestations. The bandwidth and intensity of this mental activity are based on a specific life experience, on a life lived in a way that people like to describe using the words 'honest' and ‘full’. What this suggests is a life lived with eyes wide open, and living in this way means not focusing on those cultural phenomena that may currently be all the rage, refusing to arrange one’s life comfortably or to create a lucrative professional position, but instead focusing on pulsating life and its most urgent questions. It is these questions that give rise to real art with true, deep roots (and shoots), an art that knows no compromise.

Asking fundamental questions during the period of the Soviet Union, a land where everything had to be known, was not easy. Marxism already knew everything about the world... and the things Marxism didn’t know had also been established. And so the people knew everything: Who they were, where they came from, where they were going (spoken with Gauguin). It became difficult to ask questions under such circumstances, but if someone managed to do so anyway—using his or her talent—then he or she was confronted with questions on all levels. This was because in the land of the Soviets, all of the characteristics of a ‘heroic Soviet existence’ were subsumed under the template of concrete knowledge."- Gia Edzgveradze.

Kapanadze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, a former Soviet country. She moved to Germany, in 2000. Since then she has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions in both public and commercial spaces. The artist lives and works in Bonn, Germany.

Photo Credit: Keti Kapanadze