GELA MIKAVA

Tbilisi, Georgia
Painting & material practice

Detail of Artificial Flowers III: fragmented pink flowers, a green stem and layered blue paint — Artificial Flowers III, 2026 · DetailView complete painting ↗

Selected paintings

SELECTED WORK

Artificial Flowers III — complete painting — Artificial Flowers III
2026 · 160 × 140 cm
Artificial Flowers
↗

Artificial Flowers II — complete painting — Artificial Flowers II
2026 · 160 × 140 cm
Artificial Flowers
↗

Painting · Paper · Reclaimed biaziEXPLORE THE SERIES

Across the practice

An image changes.
A trace remains.

Drawings transferred onto fabric. Sheets stapled down and pulled away. Two ways of changing what can still be seen.

The Surface Remembers — complete painting

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Transfer

The Surface Remembers ↗

2026 · 140 × 240 cm

Drawings made by children, including Mikava’s son, enter a surface already marked by domestic use.

EXPLORE WHAT REMAINS OF GESTURE

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Removal

Do Not Remove ↗

2026 · 25.3 × 29.3 cm

A drawn sheet is stapled across the surface and pulled away. Scraps remain beneath the metal fastenings.

EXPLORE PARTIAL RECORD

Material & process

A painting begins
before the first mark.

Gela Mikava is a Georgian artist based in Tbilisi, working with salvaged Soviet-era ceiling fabric known as biazi.

Recovered glue, paper, stains and wear affect how colour enters the fabric and how new layers adhere. Painting, washing and covering bring new marks into contact with these earlier traces.

MATERIAL MEMORY
BIOGRAPHY & PRACTICE

Material study — a painting, seen close · Silent film from the artist’s studio

Selected exhibitions

EXHIBITION HISTORY

Two paintings installed at Art Gallery Vake

2025 / Exhibition

Predators & Herbivores

Art Gallery Vake · 47 Irakli Abashidze Street, Tbilisi, Georgia
1 November 2025 — 1 December 2025

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White and black garments suspended in the gallery at Gela Mikava’s 2022 Ria Keburia Foundation exhibition

2022 / Solo exhibition

To The Yellow Wheat Fields And Peaceful, Blue Sky

Ria Keburia Foundation
21 March 2022 — 30 March 2022

Installation view, 2022.
Installation in the Lester Marks Collection.

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Selected texts

PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

LPC Contemporary

Material as a Vessel of Memory ↗

Curatorial text

Ateliera · The Drip

Gela Mikava Paints on What the System Left Behind ↗

Platform editorial

Paintings, drawings and reclaimed fabric in Gela Mikava’s Tbilisi studio — Studio view · Photograph: Mariam Doijashvili

The artist / Tbilisi

In the studio.

Mikava paints, washes, stitches, attaches paper and partially removes images. Different series develop through these repeated interventions.

BIOGRAPHY & STATEMENT
DOWNLOAD SELECTED CV
INQUIRIES & STUDIO VISITS