There is a new two-week art exhibition, “The Stories We Carry”, worth checking out at The Exchange/Corner House Coffee on David Ahmashenebili Avenue. This time it features only women artists: Grace Eads, Olivia Masumova, Lydia Hrenuic and Elizabeth Stunt. I was at the well-attended opening to see the work and meet its creators.
These four have been artists in residence, each pursuing her craft, for some months, in a program run in the same location by Unsung Arts. This show is a presentation of their portfolio work from this residency. Three sets of paintings and a film are on display, all beautiful and very different from each other.
Grace Eads grew up partly in East Africa, and her paintings are of fond memories from this time, in a set called “Close Even When We Are Far”. Having spent some time in Georgia, she is about to “leave the nest” and go back to her other homeland of America to begin university studies. There will be an adjustment for both her and the family, of course. I can relate to her painting of her and her siblings playing in a mango tree: with me it was climbing our family’s avocado tree, in Zimbabwe.
Olivia Masumova’s eight oil paintings are collectively called “The Light Inside”. Each of them portrays a different emotional state and story, encouraging viewers to consider their own journey towards light. These paintings are symbolic, and are balanced between Eads’s more realistic ones and Hrenuic’s more abstract offerings.
Lydia Hrenuic’s group, featuring both paintings and carefully balanced wire sculpture mobiles, is called “Between Mending & Mystery”. Here, she likens her work, and people’s lives, to a palimpsest, a layered document with texts or images on top of one another reflecting different periods of time. This represents her own search for resolution from her memories and experiences. Her pieces are the most abstract in the show, delicate ink and gold leaf compositions which look quite different when lit from front or back, as daylight from the windows reveals.
Elizabeth Stunt’s short film had its premiere at the opening evening. Called “Learning to Live”, it features a few young Americans interacting in a couple of apartment locations in Tbilisi. As a first film, it’s a fine effort, and I found myself thinking about the animated films which I hope will be emerging from my Svan fantastic tales: So much work! Daunting, a huge learning process, unlikely to have been finished (says the filmmaker) had she known how much work would be involved. But here it is. I wish all the artists success and continuation of their art, of which this show is only a glimpse of hopefully much more work yet to come.
https://www.caucasuscultureexchange.org/home/cornerhouse
109 Davit Aghmashenebeli Avenue, Tbilisi, Georgia, floor 2
Open Tuesdays through Saturdays 11 am-7 pm
Email: hello@caucasuscultureexchange.org
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
