Meet the artists | Tolia Astakhishvili

The artist’s uncanny installations delve into the energy and essence of lived spaces

Art Basel’s ‘Meet the artists’ series presents contemporary creatives shaping today’s cultural landscape

When entering an installation by Berlin-based artist Tolia Astakhishvili, one should be prepared for a certain sense of strangeness. The works transform existing architecture – walls are constructed, ceilings are lowered, and traces of human presence are introduced – to investigate the lived environment and the ways it is shaped by human inhabitants.

With a collaborative approach that extends to drawing, moving image, and painting, Astakhishvili explores the intricate relationships between structures, stories, and memories, and the architecture – real and psychological – that lies at the core of human existence. In this episode of ‘Meet the artists’, we join Astakhishvili as she installs an exhibition in Bonn, Germany, and in her second studio in Tbilisi, Georgia. ‘I think every space has its own energy,’ she says. ‘And I like playing with that.’

Tolia Astakhishvili is represented by LC Queisser (Tbilisi). An immersive installation will be on view in Art Basel’s Statements sector.

The artist’s exhibition, ‘The First Finger’ takes place in two chapters: chapter I is on view at the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, through July 30, 2023 and chapter II will take place at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin from June 23–September 24, 2023.

Tolia Astakhishvili would like to thank Vera Bedeladze, Christiane Eggers, Tina Janashia, Sina Michalskaja, and Dylan Peirce.

Director: Marcus Werner
Director of Photography: Gerrit Piechowski and Marcus Werner
Editor: Gerrit Piechowski
16mm Lab: Cinegrell Berlin

Art Basel
Executive Editor: Coline Milliard
Senior Editor: Alicia Reuter
Video Commissioner: Jeanne-Salomé Rochat
Creative Producer: Akiel Gallina