Artist Retreat with Uta Bekaia
05.01.2024
Have you ever felt a longing to connect with a deeper part of yourself, the divine being within? This being, both familiar and mysterious, embodies the brightest and darkest aspects of who we are. It represents our courage and our fears, our light and our shadow. In the workshop, called The True Form, with Uta Bekaia aims to explore and express this inner being.
This creature – be it an alter ego, imaginary friend, fear, aspiration, or guiding angel – helps us reconnect with our true soul, our original self. Through art, artists delved into this duality and bridge the inner divide. By creating masks they transform themselves, drawing on ancient traditions where humans have used these mediums to communicate with the divine. This process allows individuals to reach a pure, unfiltered version of their selves .
Final exhibition emerges from the mask-making workshop, where participants engage in the creation of masks as vessels for their mental and energetic projections-manifestations of the inner self through symbolic form. Rooted in ancient traditions, the mask transcends mere artistry, functioning as a ritualistic medium that humanity has employed for millennia to bridge the seen and unseen, the personal and the collective, the material and the spiritual.
Project is organised and developed by SKETCHING TBILISI at RIA KEBURIA RESIDENCY supported by RIA KEBURIA FOUNDATION.
The participants are:
TAMAR ALKHAZASHVILI
ALEX BEZAHLER
CAREY DUNNE
DIMITRI ELIKASHVILI
NATELA KASRADZE
MARIA MAKAROVA
VAKHTANG MDZINARISHVILI
TAMARA MGALOBLISHVILI
DARIA NAZAROVA
Uta Bekaia – Uta Bekaia (b. 1974) is a contemporary artist, he lives and works in New York and Tbilisi. He had studied Industrial Design at Tbilisi Mtsire Academy. He debuted as an artist at AMA (Avant-Guard Fashion Assembly) with a sculptural performance.
Uta Bekaia engages multiple artistic mediums, creating wearable sculptures, performances, and videos, where the borders between the disciplines are blurred, and the cultural references are synthesized in his own, personalized vision. With the background in fashion and costume making in the beginning of his career, Bekaia transformed these mediums into the main means, to approach human body and fully emerge into performances. Inspired by ancient mythology, fairy tales, Italian Baroque and Georgian Dada, Bekaia with his exuberant, sculptural costumes, reinvents and re-stages long lost, never-before documented rituals. Believing in genetical transferability of communal memory, Bekaia attempts to re-connect with the ancient knowledge and impregnate it with his own experiences and new meaning.
Among his exhibitions are Kiev 2nd Biennial; ArtIsterium 2015; Window Project; The Vasquez Building, Brooklyn; Night Intervention at State Silk Museum, Tbilisi (Georgia). Among his performances is The Longest Day performance based on Summer Solstice rituals; Turn Park Art Space, NY, 2020; Songs and Dances collaboration with Georgian Sinfonietta, Baroque Festival, National Opera House, Tbilisi; The Reminiscence Parajanov performance at close up cinema, London 2020.
Photo by Nazarova Daria