The way we live together

‘The way we live together’ is a solo show by Georgian artist Nika Kutateladze, presenting paintings, sculptures, and wall-based small iron objects within a site-responsive installation. Kutateladze attempts to transform the spectator's perception of space and offers to glimpse of a new psycho-emotional experience. The exhibition is produced in a collaboration between Gallery Artbeat (Tbilisi, Georgia) and VITRINE. It relaunches VITRINE Bermondsey’s programme with a new focus on gallery collaborations.

The exhibition refers to an infestation of the Cassidinae beetle and how that impacted the daily life of a dying mountainous village in Guria, a region of Georgia. According to local inhabitants, they had never seen a plane fly over the village until one flew over and intentionally threw down lots of Cassidinaes. They believed that since then, those insects have occupied the whole village and penetrated houses, clefts, mansards, cracks in the doors and windows, gardens, and woods. They destroyed everything around them and became an inseparable part of their life.

Such an apocalyptic motive is interesting for the artist not only for reference to social-economic changes, but also to signify individual tragedy. Cassidinaes, in this case, represent natural disasters that humans inevitably face in this world. Humans have to use technological and cultural artefacts to defend themselves, which is why humanity invents different ways of manipulating nature.

Kutateladze's practice engages with the depopulation of the 'village', exploring private and public space, economic poverty and emigration. The artist recreates an abstracted space through a poetic translation of observed meaningful elements of a local reality. A local situation is made symbolic, in an attempt to provoke multiple interpretations. This is achieved by using a myriad diverse mediums and aesthetic languages, revealing the artist's unique ability to combine these in an overall concept in which his personal experiences turn out to be in dialogue with pressing questions of our time.