A program curated by Elene Abashidze with videos by Anna Dziapshipa, Andro Eradze, Ana Gzirishvili, and Anuka Ramischvili – Shafer.
Now Mindia believed if he
Ate of the loathsome meat, ‘twould turn
To poison in his veins and every
Fibre of his body burn.
He ate one piece, and sickness smote
His every nerve: a chilling sweat
Ran down his face, and he could scarce
Repress the horror that he felt.
But suddenly it seemed to him
That from above flowed splendent light
And spreading through his veins he felt
A surging stream of strange delight.
New wisdom pierced his wond’ring brain;
He saw the world with different eyes,
He saw it smile, he heard it speak,
He knew the meaning of its sighs.
All things that breathed or lived had tongue,
Held converse soft in language strange;
And as he learned their secret thoughts
He wondered much at all this change.
- An excerpt from The Snake Eater by Vazha Pshavela, 1901.
Elene Abashidze (b. 1987) is a curator and writer living in Tbilisi, Georgia. She studied art history and theory at the Iv. Javakhishvili State University between 2008-2004 and MFA Curating at Goldsmiths College, the University of London between 2014-2012. Abashidze is a founder of E.A. Shared Space, a project space for contemporary art practices with political dimensions and Danarti Zine, a multi-disciplinary bilingual magazine on art and critical thought.
Abashidze has curated various public exhibitions, such as: ‘Twelve Women Gone Missing’ – an exhibition gathering female voices from Georgian diaspora across the 20 the century, The Writers’ House, Tbilisi State Silk Museum, Tbilisi (2018); ‘As a Metal Yarn’ – exhibition focusing on work of Vera Pagava, suggesting an alternative understanding of the history of Georgian abstraction and the relationship between art and silk production, with works by: Vera Pagava, Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili and twenty art students (2016); ‘An Absent Image’ – a group exhibition marking the 100 th year of Kazimir Malevich’s iconic ‘Black Square’, with works by: Anna K.E., Nikita Kadan, Sophie Jung and others (2015); ‘Same Same’ – an exhibition on two sites questioning the architecture of state of emergency, with commissioned works by Jesse Darling and Takeshi Shiomitsu, Batumi (2014).