Zaira Nadirashvili: “FATHER” – Art installation and performance
Batumi, 1st November 2020
In her artistic project “Father”, Zaira Nadirashvili combines paintings, installation, video art and performance. As the title indicates, the art work is dedicated to the father of the artist, who was a sailor, fisherman and was in contact with the sea for fifty years, which remained in the memory of the Zaira as a strong connection to city. At the same time, this installation is a kind of reflection on how the urban environment is changing, how technologies (fishing ships) are replacing the traditional fisherman’s boat, net, fishing traditions of city etc.
The project consisted of two parts:
a) Installation in “Contemporary Art Space Batumi”: Zaira arranged an exhibition of several paintings– paintings of sea, boats (her reflections via painting), and the major installation – a real size old wooden boat in center of the hall with a fishermen net and video arts projected on a wall. It reflected her connection to her childhood memories, her father and fishermen in her community. In the past, the craft of boat building was quite common among locals, and people used to do fishing in the sea. This is vanishing now – even it was hard to find such boat and fishermen net for installation .. With urbanization, it is changing and now there are bigger fishing ships with new technologies, and the community of local fishermen, craftsmen who were doing wooden boats, nets are disappearing and gradually just staying in memories..
>> Video of the installation “wooden boat” presented by the artist with comments in English by organizer Zviad Eliziani
b) Performance in the “Italian yard” (connected to the presentation of Irakli Dzneladze): From the top of the building (inside the yard) a white fishermen’s net goes down to the ground, surrounding meditating Zaira who is sitting on a ladder (in fact seems like floating in air). This final installation – white fisherman net coming down from the top and wrapping Zaira in like a bride, symbolically unites all the memories presented by the artists Zaira and Irakli (photos, mirror, boat, memories of locals etc.).
Zaira Nadirashvili was born on January 22nd 1985 in Batumi, Georgia. Since 2001 she has been engaged in artistic photography and consequently from 2001 until 2014 Zaira held 8 personal photography exhibitions.
Since 2014 she began painting and had two personal exhibitions: One of them was held in the National Museum of Tbilisi, and the other was held in the Batumi State Art Museum. The main concept of the exhibition was the fauna of Georgian forests.
Now Zaira creates artworks in both spheres of art: photography and painting.
Over the past few years, she has been studying Gestalt Psychology. Against the backdrop of this new experience, Zaira created a series of new original works “New Me”, the concept of this project encompasses paintings on canvas, installations, and “video art” in collaboration with Lisa Glonti and Te Te Noise.
The project “New Me” reflects the creative process of an integral personality, where the author tries to convey to the viewer a completely new look in the creative sphere, where philosophy, art and psychology represent one whole organism.