We started our time in Georgia with a visit to Mamuka Japharidze. Mamuka is an artist and teacher at The Center of Contemporary Art – Tbilisi (Artistic Practice in Relation with Organic Agriculture). His house and studio is based just outside Tbilisi overlooking the town from the hill. It was a wonderful start to our visit. Part of Mamuka’s practice is concentrated on the process of preparation of high quality organic foods, foraging and using traditional techniques of cooking and preserving. We’ve tasted his wines with home made cheeses, smoked paprika and bread, with additions of herbs and relishes. It was glorious. Accompanied byhis story telling about the history of Caucasus in connection to Greek mythology, gold and silk traces.
Following his advice we visited the Georgian National Museum http://museum.ge/?lang_id=ENGGEO&sec_id=1 and then Tbilisi State Silk Museum http://silkmuseum.ge/for-visitors/#1545323163281-25e16c49-17c6.
I’ve included a few items from these collections in my painted notes shown at the no format gallery in November.
The National Museum holds a collection of artefacts, from jewellery, through icon paintings to traditional clothing. The silk museum was really interesting for me. I come from Milanowek – a small town just outside Warsaw in Poland with a long tradition of silk painting and production. My mother paints on silk, and I was doing it for a while before starting my MFA at WarsawAcademy of Fine Arts in 1999. Seeing the history of different processes was very inspiring and made me think about this connection. The director of the museum is an artist and curator Nino Kuprava, she welcomes contemporary art projects and has a vision for expanding the modern art part of the collection. There is definitely a place for future collaboration and I’m hoping to be back there at some point.
Another place worth mentioning is Villa Garikula. art residency complex, with studios, gallery space and open landscape. The landscape surrounding the place is breath taking, the whole site is magical. It has a history of visiting artists and creatives, so each centimetre feels very special.
The generous location allows for experiments with larger scale projects and a variety of mediums. Garikula is placed around 80kmaway from Tbilisi, close to the ancient city Kaspi. We met with the director Karaman Kutateladze, at his studio in Tbilisi. We spoke briefly about the possibility of a residency exchange programme and his work at Garikula.
I’m also attaching a few pictures from Stalin’s museum at Gori. This is more like an amusement house, presenting a glorified version of the life of the most famous son of Georgia. There is no mention there of his crimes, so it is a very unnerving place to visit.
I feel like I didn’t have enough time in Georgia and I’m planning to go back there, without rushing from meeting to meeting, or to see another museum or church. Just to be.
We took an overnight train from Tbilisi to Baku. Entering Azerbaijan wasn’t entirely pleasant due to the political regime and us having visited Armenia earlier. That is a story for the next entry.
