'The Shelter' - Interview with Keti Kapanadze, Elene Abashidze

E.A: Keti, how would you describe your

personal experience of the 1990’s crisis of

Georgia.

K.K: I started to work as an independent artist in 1983. At the same time, I was studying at the State Academy of Fine Art, where Contemporary Art was rejected. There are moments in life, when one decision changes everything around you, in my life this kind of decision was to be connected with Gia Edzgveradze*. The fact, that he was always by my side, helped me to become the person I am now. Sometimes, we do not even know if we gain or lose our potential, when we make a decision. I think, the real crisis is when we consider life as a whole line of compromises and just follow the routine.

1990’s crisis didn’t suppressed me as much as my own crisis did in the end of 1980. It was then, when I realized that drawing was not enough formy art anymore. Realizing the fact, that I did not want to work in the same way or with the same material was difficult itself, because nobody taught us how to do that kind of thing. This is the same feeling as being sick and getting worse and worse day by day, until you fully recover and see that you really have done something on your own.

Back then, in 1990 I created the first artwork, which was crucial for my practice. It was the series of my passport photo. I took six portraits of mine and turned them into different people, such as: a woman and a man, an Asian, African and a European. It was my first Conceptual work, a kind of a contra attitude to the Soviet art, that didn’t care about a person and their per-sonality.

In 1991 I arrived in Kazan. (It was back then, when the tension started in Abkhazia). I made a photo project there. The photos represented somehow locked and melancholic areas, even though some pictures were taken outdoors. The main idea of this project was a person and their existence. By that time the concept of my works, was that I paid attention to the everyday life objects, that didn’t have a conceptual value before. I wanted to turn them into signs, which sign toward something else, rather than only resembling the material and the physical world.

When the real crisis started in the country, I took up writing. As a child, I wanted to be a writer. Back then, I was writing poems, scripts, conceptual and philosophical texts. I used to give graphical form to texts for my artworks, and used metal for it.

What is art? For every artist, art is a form of life. And sometimes as the boundaries are blurred, we don’t even notice, that we never change ourselves or our style and become our own products. I think that, “signature of an artist” is a point of view from the past century. Nowadays, an artist only thinks about the concept and uses every way to express that concept.

E.A: When I first encountered your
photographs, first thing that came to my mind
was that there should be a well trained
graphical artist behind them. Did you study
photography at the Academy?

K.K: I was studying at the Nikoladze School of Fine Art. There I took sculpture classes for two years. In the State Academy I took classes in drawing. In 1990, I started to work on photography on my own. Only the aesthetic side of photography never interested me. Photography is a tool for expression, this is why I call it Conceptual Photography. The more I get close to what I want to say, the more expressing the work is.
I can’t say that my art is politically charged, even  hough I have works where I use the word Politics itself. This is not a propaganda kind of work, but it’s never far from our social reality too. The plot of the text without a physical form would be just literature.

E.A: Keti, you are one of the pioneers of
Contemporary Art in Georgia. This already
was a brave step at the tiomes when all that
was not a part of the Soviet canon was simply
not accepted.On top of this you are female.
Was it difficult to be a Conteporary Artist and
a woman at the same time?

K.K: I can say it for sure, that nobody would let me do my own exhibition in 1983 for those exact reasons. And also for I was 20 years old. My family
consisted of only women. My mother was an actress and my grandmother was a modern lady.
I was raised listening to her words: You have to be an independent woman. I’ve always been against
the demands that were making people to fit in the social standards. I don’t know how my inner
conflict would end if not Pere-stroika. From 1992, I started to get various scholarships and was
traveling abroad. In that peri-od many artists left the country and never came back. I think, that
even today in Georgia, peo-ple don’t realize that the culture is not only defined by history, culture
is evolving day by day and the most importantly, culture is always changing its criteria.

E.A: Why did you leave?

K.K: There were two reasons why I wouldn’t stay abroad, the first was my daughter Anna . It was i
mpossible to leave the country with a child, back then. The second reason was my social role. I want
ed to change the awareness in the Georgian society. This is why I published the first Georgian
magazine on Contemporary Art. It was Koka Ramishvili, Niko Lomashvili and I who started the
magazine. When we failed to fund raise for the second issue - I gave up. Today all three of us liveabroad. In 2000 I went to Germany with a scholarship - this time with Anna. This fact played a significant role
for Anna and her art as well. I think her works carry the signs of the whole culture, but also stay
very actual. I think there is not enough information in Georgia, about the abroad living
young artists. 

E.A: What advice would you give to those
who face the same obstacles today as you did
then? How should one survive the 1990’s?

K.K: Probably everyone who lived the period of the crisis, remembers that at the schools,
universities and hospitals people would work for free. Sometimes work is the best escape. I think
everyone should do things they don’t know, things that need to be discovered. As Einstein
said: ‘Always ask questions’. As an artist I would say the same - you have to work to survive. To me
art is a shelter which is always with me, no matter where I live.

---

* Gia Edzgveradze - Artist and an important figure in shaping contemporary art scene in Georgia. Today he lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany.