Tolia Astakhishvili

The guest editor for this season is interdisciplinary artist Tolia Astakhishvili. To examine memory, space, and the human condition, Tolia creates large scale installations, using painting, sculpture, video art, found materials and everyday objects, and immersing it into architecture. Her selection of texts are as diverse as her work, and involve both scientific and literary pieces.

Tolia Astakhishvili: 

“In Praise of Shadows”, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki 

In Praise of Shadows creates an atmosphere where my thoughts both rest and draw inspiration. 

This particular, detail-oriented piece of writing might seem pedantic to some, yet I believe sculpture is created in a way that is much similar — through meticulous attention to every detail, shaping something complete physically, and also full of spirituality and love.  This book takes us back to a world where we feel the absence of what has been replaced by laminated flooring and plastic window frames. I don’t have enough words to say everything that I wish to express, but everyone will probably have their own understanding, so it is better to say less.

“The Machine Stops”, E.M. Forster 

It is inconceivable that this story was written in 1909 — as it reflects our present reality with such precision. 

It makes us think about all the precious things we lose each time we immerse ourselves in social media and the virtual world. 

This excerpt, to me, speaks volumes and hopefully, will urge us to reconsider our habits. 

“I walked until I grew weary and my sense of ‘near’ and ‘far’ was restored within me.”

“The Debutante”, Leonora Carrington 

What I especially love about Leonora Carrington’s The Debutante is the way she captures a child’s reaction to enforcement. 

“If going to the ball hadn’t been so hateful, I would never have taken such a step”, says the main character.

It amazes me how a writer, in such a simple way, without any apparent preparation, can completely turn your perception around and make you feel that anything is possible in art. 

Edward Relph, “Place and Placelessness”, David Seamon and Jacob Sowers 

“Places, essentially, are “multivalent axes of our direct engagement with the world” (Relph, 1976, p.141). 

This text made me reflect on the extent to which the places we inhabit truly belong to us — and, at the same time, how much responsibility we might bear toward them, what defines a place? Is it only its geographical location, or also the boundaries we create, our customs, and the care that we extend toward it? 

This work raises many questions. 

This is “the eradication of distinctive places and their replacement by uniform landscapes, a process grounded in indifference toward the significance of particular locations” (Relph, 1976, Introduction). 

Tolia Astakhishvili (b. 1974, Tbilisi, Georgia) lives and works between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her recent solo exhibitions include: “A wound on my plate”, Emalin, London; “to love and devour”, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Venice (2025); “Result”, LC Queisser, Tbilisi; “between father and mother”, SculptureCenter, New York (2024); “The First Finger (chapter II)”, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2023); “The First Finger”, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2023); and “I Think It’s Closed”, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld (2023). Her works have also been featured in group exhibitions at: MoMA PS1, New York (2025); the 15th Kaunas Biennial, Kaunas; Foundation Pernod Ricard, Paris (2025); MACRO Museum, Rome; LC Queisser, Tbilisi; galerie frank elbaz, Paris; Condo Complex, London (2024); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zurich; Emalin, London; Molitor Gallery, Berlin; LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2023); Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin; Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2022); LC Queisser, Tbilisi; Art Hub Copenhagen, Copenhagen; Räume für Kunst, Karpen; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Capitain Petzel Galerie, Berlin (2021); Goethe Institute Bulgaria / Earth and Man National Museum, Sofia; Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2019); and Cabinet, London (2018). 

Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō. In Praise of Shadows. Translated by Thomas J. Harper and Edward G. Seidensticker. Sedgwick, ME: Leete's Island Books, 1977. (Donwload the text here)

Leonora Carrington, “The Debutante”, Biblioklept, 5 Jan. 2014, https://biblioklept.org/2014/01/05/the-debutante-a-short-story-by-leonora-carrington/. (Donwload the text here)

E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops”, Forster, E. M. The Machine Stops. First published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review, November 1909. Reprinted in The Eternal Moment and Other Stories. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1928; also in The Collected Tales of E. M. Forster. New York: The Modern Library, 1968. (Donwload the text here)

David Seamon and Jacob Sowers, Edward Relph’s “Place and Placelessness”, Seamon, David, and Jacob Sowers. “Place and Placelessness, Edward Relph.” In Key Texts in Human Geography, edited by Phil Hubbard, Rob Kitchin, and Gill Valentine, 43–51. London: Sage, 2008. (Donwload the text here)