გზად: A Space Between the Places is a personal art project by Nika Khabelashvili, presenting an artistic exploration of the concept of home through an existential perspective closely intertwined with the external world. Within this research, cultural, geographical, urban, and social dimensions converge into a broad contextual field. The exhibition marks the final stage of a long-term process, where home – a fundamental condition of existence – becomes the artist’s primary point of observation and inspiration. Khabelashvili’s desire to perceive the mutable sensations of his own and universal human existence connects personal experiences to a deeply humanistic understanding of essential beings.
The genesis of his inspiration lies in his childhood. The family house in Gori and its fabric ceiling patterns, a material that he later transformed into large-scale paintings exhibited in 2023 at the Gori Art House. At that stage, the artist realized a long-conceived idea: to travel overland from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. Living in his car and embracing 14 months of homelessness became both a literal and metaphorical departure from the familiar as an act of leaving the comfort zone. Through crossing foreign borders, the next chapter of his investigation into the meaning of home unfolded.
Home… border… escape and return…
The silence between places, faces, and the fleeting profiles of strangers; the artistic fixation of temporary, heightened emotions – these constitute the project’s visual and conceptual fabric. Large-scale acrylic canvases, abstract landscapes captured during the journey, roadside sketches and found objects, self-interviews, conversations with strangers, and post-return reflective installations – all reveal key phases of Khabelashvili’s artistic process.
Where can one truly be at home, and what does home signify when one travels at 100 kilometers per hour, crossing 9 countries and 11 destinations within 14 months?
Through constant observation, the artist unveils invisible spaces – horizons that emerge from sudden collisions of emotion: pain, fear, doubt, freedom, and the fragile clarity of independence. In these intersecting intervals and abstract coordinates, the familiar and the unknown repel each other’s shadows. What remains afterward? What is the nature of the bare gaze?
Seemingly foreign surfaces begin to resemble what is most intimate – leading back to the self. In this process, the self becomes an organic part of an unfamiliar landscape, merging all seen and unseen boundaries. What might lie beyond this frontier?
Text: Mariam Shergelashvili, Art Historian and Curator
Concept and Project by: Artist Nika Khabelashvili
Guest Curator for the Final Exhibition: Mariam Shergelashvili
Supported by: Ria Keburia Foundation
