WINDOW PROJECT at

ZONAMACO 2024 EJES | BOOTH EJ28

For ZⓈONAMACO EJES 2024 Window Project, Tbilisi is pleased to introduce a booth presentation of Levani (Levan Mindiashvili), Rusudan Khizanishvili, Tamara K.E. and Uta Bekaia. A selection of drawings, paintings, mixed media installation and soft sculptures illuminate the experience of eroticism in different ways, questioning issues of sexuality, gender identity and gender politics through the lens of queer and female artists born and raised in Eastern Europe in particular, the post-Soviet country of Georgia, where sexuality, predominantly female and homosexual, was an absolute taboo.

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” —Audre Lorde "The Uses of the Erotic, The Erotic as Power”

Levani's transdisciplinary practice is an eco-centric inquiry into the questions of being and expanded concept of “human.” Through seductive visual language permeated with erotic resilience, they explore queer subjectivities and desires as forms of relation and world-building. Their recent body of work collectively titled “imago(s) of desire(s)” takes on linguistic, biological and psychological meanings of the “imago:” - Latin for image, imago also is the last, winged stage in insect development, when it reaches its sexual maturity. Juxtaposed with their studies of mating rituals of dragonflies and other (non-human) species, Levani creates complex, layered images of interspecies intercourse - reimagining the radical ways of interconnectivity, porousness and transformation. Multi-panel drawings are layered with translucent latex fabric, encased in boxed frames they’re incrusted with soil, incense, flowers, liquid mirror, gemstones and other matter - as a celebration and affirmation of material richness and complexity of being.

Rusudan Khizanishvili, whose artistic practice is linked to the destiny of women in the socio-political and cultural context of Georgia, focuses on the role of women and the power inherent within femininity. In a society of suppressed sexuality, Khizanishvili glorifies pleasure and power, the interconnection of nature and humanity iconographically uniting contemporaries, mythological heroes, historical figures, flora and animals in vividly vibrant paintings and ceramic sculptures.  

In her latest body of work, Düsseldorf-based Tamara K.E. has been focusing through a feminist prism, suggesting the moment of dissolution and a state of delirium, the idea of constant transformation and the random interplay of pictorial elements. Through a direct, knife-sharp speech in her drawing series "End of the Fringe "and "Remnants of the Glaring Day", she establishes seemingly random, free-flowing systems of codes, signifiers, and energy fields to create a stage for that final outcry of farewell to history moving toward a yet unseen future.

Uta Bekaia's soft sculpture is a part of his ongoing multimedia project, "Sea, Sea, Swallow Me". The project is based on the narrative written by the artist. It tells a story where people change their path artificially by triggering a fabricated apocalypse with seven explosions. After this, humans mutate and become Super-Humans, fully expanding their consciousness. Bekaia's work is a speculative recreation of his ancestral rituals restaged for Queer utopian future.

For inquiries : info@windowproject.co