Tbilisi: Roses from the Rubble, Part 2
By HG Masters
The exterior of the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, where one half of the exhibition
With the openings of the inaugural Tbilisi Art Fair (TAF), the alternative “Oxygen – Tbilisi No Fair,” two inaugural projects by the nomadic Kunsthalle Tbilisi, and a gallery newly relocated from Berlin (LC Queisser), Tbilisi in mid-May had a lot going on. Fortunately, these events and others around town also provided showcases for Georgian art of the past, whether mid-century or post-millenium. Most ambitious among them was a two-part exhibition titled “Twelve Women Gone Missing” (a reference to drawings by Maia Naveriani), in which curator Elene Abashidze looked at ten (not twelve) important female Georgian artists born through the 20th century who had left the country. The stated purpose of the exhibition was to question both the narrative of Georgian art history in light of these “missing” figures, and “the notion of belonging” when Georgian art developed while artists were living in cities around the world.
