Mariam Natroshvili, Dimitri Shevardnadze - Art Curator

A hundred years ago, every significant development in Georgian art was led by Dimitri Shevardnadze:

the founding of the Society of Georgian Artists, exhibitions at the Temple of Glory, the establishment of the National Art Gallery, the creation of the Museum of Art’s collection, and the beginnings of the Museum of Art itself — “Metekhi.”

In the research project “Dimitri Shevardnadze – Curator of Art,” Mariam Natroshvili explores Shevardnadze’s curatorial and museological work.

Through this text, we see Tiflis and Tiflisian art of a century ago through the eyes of Dimitri Shevardnadze.
To vividly reconstruct that time, the text includes extensive excerpts from newspaper articles: reviews, responses, and letters.

Mariam Natroshvili, Dimitri Shevardnadze – Curator of Art

Mariam Natroshvili is an artist and researcher. She was born in 1987 in Tbilisi. She holds a degree in Oriental Studies and a Master’s in Social Sciences.

Since 2011, she has been working together with Detu Jincharadze. Their practice spans multiple media, including text-based art, video, interactive programs, and games. They also collect oral histories. Natroshvili’s work explores themes of memory, forgetting, and disappearance. She turns to the city, its buildings, and its architecture to investigate memory — observing how political and social changes are reflected in urban and architectural spaces, and consequently, in society itself.

Mariam and Detu’s works have been exhibited at numerous local and international venues, including IDFA DocLab, Gwangju GMAP Facade Project, Sinop Biennial, and the Porto Photography Biennial, among others. In 2022, their work “I Pity the Garden” represented Georgia at the Venice Biennale, in the country’s national pavilion. Mariam and Detu’s texts and public art pieces can also be encountered in public spaces across Tbilisi and other cities.