Elene Abashidze

Elene Abashidze (Georgian, born 1987) is a curator and writer living and working in Tbilisi, Georgia. Abashidze received her MFA Curating from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2014. She is cofounder and coeditor of Danarti Zine, a bilingual cross-disciplinary series of publications focusing on art and critical thought in Georgia, and founder and curator at E. A. Shared Space, a project space focusing on local and international contemporary art practices with a political dimension. Abashidze has published interviews and articles in local and international magazines including Arts of the Working Class, the Brooklyn Rail, and Theory and Practice, among others.

Contributions

Central & Eastern Europe | Transnational Histories and Non-aligned Networks

Vera Pagava: A Miraculous Mirror

This text considers the work of Vera Pagava, a Georgian artist who lived in exile in Paris, as an amalgamation of modernist and Georgian art historic references. Following Pagava’s life story from Tbilisi, where she was born, to Germany and later Paris, where she settled with her family in 1923 and lived until her death in 1988, this essay introduces her work in relation to that of various other Georgian artists, simultaneously tracing her path from figuration to abstraction.