People often ask me why I paint on biaz. For me, it is not simply an alternative to canvas. It is a carrier of memory.

Biaz is a utilitarian cotton textile that was widely used in Soviet domestic interiors, including as a material stretched across ceilings beneath layers of paper and paint. I grew up with this fabric in our home in Zugdidi, Georgia. When rain passed through the damaged roof, water left amber-colored stains across the ceiling. My brother and I would lie beneath them and search for figures, animals, and landscapes inside their changing forms. Long before I understood painting conceptually, this unstable surface had already taught me to see images as something that could emerge, disappear, and transform.

When I entered art school in Zugdidi as a child, biaz appeared again—this time as a surface for painting. Ready-made canvas was difficult to access, so the fabric was stretched onto wooden frames and prepared by hand to receive paint. What began as economic necessity gradually became part of my visual language.

Today, I work primarily with second-hand, weathered biaz. I seek out fabrics from old houses and lived-in interiors rather than buying pristine material. I wash and prepare them, but stains, wear, discoloration, and traces of previous use remain. I do not consider these marks imperfections to be erased; they are part of the work before I make the first gesture.

Through paint, paper, collage, tearing, and layering, I intervene in surfaces that already contain their own histories. Biaz therefore operates simultaneously as material, personal memory, and a physical remnant of Soviet and post-Soviet life.

What began as necessity became a technique—and eventually a language.