UNFOLDING NUPTIALS
curated by Vija Skangale
2026
Tbilisi-based artist Thea Gvetadze and Estonian artist Paul Kondas met each other in an exhibition titled “Unfolding Nuptials”in Temnikova and Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, Estonia
The exhibition featured two artists who lived in different geographies, at different times, and in different environments, and who never met. However, the ability to see the world through a lens of truth and unmasked perception is what distinguishes and brings together Paul and Thea.
While Thea’s artistic practice reveals honest realities and hidden layers that often escape the gaze of the average observer, Paul’s paintings disclose the complexities of life—signs of resistance, whispers of dissent, and the quiet passions that drive human connection. Often unnoticed, they also expose the truth about political systems and relationships.
Exhibition is supported by the Cultural Endowment of Estonia.
(Soviet Georgian Industrial Graphic Design, 1950–1990) curated by Vija Skangale, Tbilisi Art Fair 2026
The exhibition explored a forgotten chapter of Georgian Industrial Graphic Design from 1950 to 1990, bringing into light the work of three graphic designers: Severian Ketskhoveli (1906–1980), Anri Samashvili (1931–2008), and Tsotne Moniava (1932–1996). Although they operated within the Soviet Georgian industrial system, their legacies and identities have largely gone unrecognised.
Through their designs of labels, typefaces, fonts and colour palettes, these designers embedded subtle elements of national cultural identity despite the strict censorship. They introduced resistant aesthetic codes into everyday items such as wine and lemonade labels, tea boxes, and cigarette packs. The exhibition took an ‘exhibition as research’ approach, commissioned by the Cartveli Art Foundation, focusing on these three graphic designers and the objects they created. The exhibition featured artefacts from family archives. The exhibition design by Studio Gypsandconcrete /Lado Lomitashvili, set at table height to encourage close examination and engagement, invited visitors to participate in the ongoing research process by close looking or by sharing their stories or information. The commissioned digital artwork by Svitlana Reinish showcased a larger digital archive.
Commissioned texts: Kote Bolkvadze
Poster Design: Giorgi Grdzelishvili
Exhibition photos: Grigory Sokolynsky
Tbiilisi, Georgia,
2025
The collapse of the Soviet Union profoundly impacted everyday life in the national republics, and underground performance art provided a space for imagining alternative socio-political movements amid the transition. This project explored lesser-known experimental practices in Georgia from the 1980s through the 1990s, including land art, body art, and video art. In particular, the project focused on how artists used their artistic practices to navigate through the crisis periods, including the collapse of the USSR, the Coup d'état in December (1991) and the Georgian Civil War (1991-1993). Despite facing severe constraints like prolonged power outages and scarcity of food, water, electricity, and gas, these artists maintained an active presence.
As at once a study of experimental art amid the political turmoil and transition of the 1980s and 1990s, the project also attends to the continued relevance of these forms of art in shaping our political present and in intervening against authoritarian violence.
Many performances from the 1990s in Georgia remain undocumented, with only a limited number of photographs and oral histories attesting to their existence. This project aimed to include re-enactments of performances that held symbolic significance during that period, as well as those that were not recorded, such as those by the Vardzia art group. Additionally, the program featured screenings of archival footage of performances from the 1990s.
WATCH A SHORT FILM ABOUT THIS PROGRAMME ONLINE
THE FEELING IN MY TONGUE
Three Highgate Gallery, London, UK
2024
An interdisciplinary exhibition featured six practice-based doctoral candidates at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts. The exhibition showcased their ongoing research projects through various media such as textiles, sound, sculpture, installation, performance, and moving images, and invited exploration of our own individual perceptions of their works.
How does our engagement with sensorial, auditory or tactile, based on our lived experiences or impairment, evoke sensations and emotional responses in our bodies? We invited people to investigate how the subjective processes of perception and engagement are influenced by accumulated life experiences, and how these interactions manifest in physical responses across the observer's corporeal and experiential dimensions.
Showing my husband, then-boyfriend, a collection of my childhood photographs, I came across one of a four-year-old me on a papier-mâché horse in Tbilisi Zoo.
I was born in Tbilisi in the 1980s, back when the country was still a part of the Soviet Union. Visiting the zoo was a special event for me: it meant that I would get a Plombir ice cream, a cup of sparkling gazirovka (a non-alcoholic sparkling beverage), and a ride on an amusement ride adjacent to the premises. But the highlight of the day would always be getting the chance to sit on the papier-mâché horse that looked like it had galloped from a merry-go-round ride. I remember being helped onto the horse, filled with anticipation and excitement at having my photo taken, but also overcome with shyness in front of the photographer
Revisiting the childhood memory made me curious to learn more about this papier-mâché horse and the person behind the camera. I embarked on my search for the photographer only to find the Tbilisi Zoo holds no archive. After much digging around, and enquiring on social media, I found out that Victor Sukiasov (1930-2017) was the unsung photographer in question.
Read more about this project
Press about this project
Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts
2024
The Central Saint Martins library showcased research-in-progress of 17 doctoral researchers working across disciplines at CSM. To BOOKMARK is draw attention to a moment in our PhD journeys, a page or paragraph highlighted in bright marker or marginalia that we may return to again and again. This is the third instalment of an annual showcase of doctoral research at CSM. The aim was to provoke, inform and generate conversations within and beyond the postgraduate community. The work was shown across vitrines and video monitors, and a series of printed bookmark interventions hidden in books on the shelves of Central Saint Martins Library.
TATE MODERN,
London, UK
2018
Reimagine the role of the arts in an age of rapid technological change and explore how, through the arts, we can move beyond everyday consumption and technology as a spectacle. Together let’s challenge the mainstream, say the unsaid and address inclusion, integration and the production of technology in our lives, society, work, education, and in the arts.
The Digital Maker Collective and invited guest contributors/makers from across the globe will transform Tate Exchange into a large public tech innovation studio, a space to get hands-on with technology exploration and rapid prototyping, and discover new forms of collaborative digital making experimentation.
For more Information and details of the week-long programme, please visit: http://digitalmakercollective.org and the #artsworkofthefuture hashtag.
This event is programmed by Digital Maker Collective, a Tate Exchange Associate.
Ria Keburia Foundation
"Unfolding: from Ideas into Practice" is a series of workshops and talks that engage emerging artists in conversations about the critical relationship to creative practices.
Dates: 20th January 2021 - 20th March 2021
On Friday 26 January 2018 the Digital Maker Collective were invited to activate the 4th Floor Boiler House, Tate Modern as part of Uniqlo Tate Late event, which this month was programmed in collaboration with the Tate Exchange Associates.
AI group intervention had two interactive installations: The first was a recorded holographic installation that gave a short description of all the various activities being shown by the Digital Makers Collective at the Tate
Late event. The second intervention was a mock robot that directly interacts with the audience initiating a dialogue on technological production and its impact on our lives.