NY Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness Part II

Artists: Anuk Beluga, Nino Biniashvili, Tim Foley, Rita Khachaturian, Tamara Kvesitadze, Dana Levy, Shiri Mordechay, Mariam Natroshvili & Detu Jincharadze, Andy Ralph, Giorgi Rodionov, Mikheil Sulakauri

Bringing the rare dialogue between contemporary Georgian and American art to New York, Kunstraum is pleased to present New York Meets Tbilisi: Defining Otherness – Part 2. As the result of a year-long period of curatorial research as Kunstraum’s Curator-in-Residence, Nina Mdivani sets works by eight Georgian and four American artists into relation to facilitate a discussion on Otherness – and what it potentially means.

Compassion, sympathy, possessiveness, infatuation, mistrust, anger, rage, an ability or inability to relate— all of these affects derive either from a pull of belonging or a push towards a threatening annihilation of the self. At times, they are projected towards a single being, a distinct society, an architecture, languages or cultural iconography. The purpose of this two-part, Georgian-American exhibition is to explore and evoke emotions and perspectives that habitually arise when we confront the other on a micro or macro scale.

Two distinct cultures are set in conversation through the face-to-face encounters of Georgian and American artists. Distinct artistic narratives have been selected for the purpose of showing particular forms of Otherness— be it in the form of another person, a different ideology, a distinct sexual orientation or the alienating part of ourselves and our collective past. All trajectories around Otherness fall into the psychological dichotomy of affection or disaffection, and, in a wider sense, the feelings of desire and fear of death.

Highlighting strands of love and fear and their visual iterations in the contemporary art of Georgia and the United States, this exhibition is interested in developing a way of unifying disparate parts into one understandable whole, as if putting the shards of a broken mirror back together to admit the impossibilities of portrayal and the necessity to actively fill gaps towards a larger understanding. With prejudices and insecurities across these two countries, a picture of similarity can be seen— a modern conundrum filled with potency.

Dana Levy (1975) and Mikheil Sulakauri (1996), two video artists, use specific environments in their anthropological explorations to confront the Otherness of places, acting as guides for the viewer. Levy’s work in this exhibition was shot during her residency in the Everglades where she saw how people learn to exist within the wildness, sometimes inviting it into their homes. Sulakauri uses religious syncretism originating from remote Georgia to illustrate what has been annihilated with the advancement of modernity. This video, showing an endless circulation of symbols throughout the centuries, combines the forgotten sounds of the past with memories, cultural codes, desires and attitudes.