“Corona Days” Artworks of Young Georgian Artists: Mariam Akhobadze
Continuing its collaboration with BI Auction, GEORGIA TODAY presents artists participating in the online exhibition ‘Artworks @Corona Days.’ In this issue, we meet Mariam Akhobadze, a young Georgian artist with an outstanding vision.
After graduating from high school, Mariam was accepted into the Painting School of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. Finding herself in visual arts, she got her Master’s in Painting in 2014 from the same college.
“Since then, I’ve been working actively in my studio,” Mariam tells us. It’s evident that she has been finding the lockdown pretty productive, too: she has so far entered five of her works into the BI Auction-organized online exhibition. All her pieces are works created with an interesting perspective, while the genre is in the neighborhood of Impressionism: no distinct figures; thick brush strokes; the paintings carry in themselves an indescribable, chilling loneliness. The red dog, empty urban streets, faceless characters… It’s easy to attribute Mariam’s works to the global pandemic anxiety, but the artist herself has a different perspective:
“My works do not describe the situation literally, they are just expressions of emotions that are usual attributes to extreme situations,” says the young artist.
“A situation which is not dependent on a person. A situation of being imprisoned in the depths of an urban jungle, and the way out is not up to the object,” – the picture in the artist’s own words.
Curious to find out more about the painter’s vision, we asked her how the situation created due to the pandemic had influenced her creative process. “The situation has formed many questions, questions that wouldn’t have been asked otherwise,” she answered. What questions? We’ll let the paintings answer.
“Existing in a blurred reality.”
When we asked the artist about the future of art in the post-pandemic world, she dismissed the very idea of essential change. “I personally don’t see the difference between the two worlds of art in the post-pandemic or pre-pandemic reality.” Maybe she is right; maybe our current emotions are experienced each time we find ourselves in an extreme situation. The only real difference then, would be that these feelings are now commonly experienced by almost all members of society. Not incidentally, that lonely unity is one of Mariam’s themes in her Corona Days artworks.
“People’s spiritual and cultural heritage is the basis of our ritual unity. That heritage is also the basis of transferring from individual existence to co-habitual existence.”
By Nini Dakhundaridze
About BI Auction ‘for ART’: BI Auction is the first Art Auction Company of Georgia, established in 2016. The company’s aim is to promote Georgian art and artists and enlarge the market. In four years, BI Auction ‘for ART’ has organized seven auctions and presented more than 400 paintings from 120 Georgian painters. In every auction, the collection is selected from among a thousand paintings from the well-known legendary artists of Georgia and also from promising young artists. For more information, please contact biauction1@gmail.com
MAIN PHOTO: “The unity of people, transferring from a personal space to a shared one; a space that makes a person feel not so alone anymore and represses him, at the same time,” – the picture in the artist’s own words.