Untitled, Circa 2013

Giorgi Shengelia  

Giorgi Shengelia is a photographer based in Tbilisi, Georgia. Operating through materials, spaces, sources of light, and image, and obtaining multi-layered images through modifications, is Giorgi Shengelia's recent artistic challenge, aspiration, goal, and desire.

The space of his experiments turns the image into a kind of 'visual haiku', which is saturated with melancholic delicacy and nostalgia for the lost, faded world; and similar to haiku, it seems to fit the whole universe in 17 syllables. The multi-layered image, the artist is working in the darkroom is loaded with meanings and the increasingly rare luxury of enjoying the ephemeral in the relentlessly accelerated rhythm of rational modernity, along with the reflections on infinite to finite.

„In my photographs, which I have been taking for years, I discovered that the same images keep appearing: flowers on the graves, grey hair, pools of blood during the mountain
celebrations, fading plants, cemeteries, lifeless animals left on the roads... I see the connection between these images. None of the photographs depict a person. Each photograph is a still life, and a symbol of life's transience and the certainty of death. It has become my way of fighting the fear of death, by understanding it through the medium of photography“ – Giorgi Shengelia

Giorgi Shengelia graduated in Power Engineering and Telecommunication from Georgian Technical University in 2006 and moved to Florence, Italy with his family. It was while living there that he developed his interest in art and photography and in 2012 he decided to follow the courses of photojournalism at Fondazione Studio Marangoni. After completing his first personal project (Four

Rooms on everyday life of Georgian women migrants in Italy) he returned to Tbilisi where he works as a freelance photographer. In parallel with his documentary work, he develops a more plastic and more artisanal photography.

Highlights

Hariban Award International Collotype Photography Competition. Photo Series “sound of silence." Kyoto, (Japan), 2023

Helsinki Darkroom Festival Winner project - ''Accidental portraits '', Helsinki (Finland), 2022

Kolga Tbilisi Photo contest Winner project - ''Accidental portraits '' Nomination ''Conceptual Photo Project'' Tbilisi (Georgia), 2020

Helsinki Darkroom Festival Exhibition in Finish Museum of Photography. Helsinki (Finland). 2022
''Transfiguration or 17 On" - Revelat Festival. Spain Barcelona, 2021

''Transfiguration or 17 On'' - Tbilisi Photography &Multimedia Museum. Tbilisi (Georgia), 2021

Virtual Solo Show within Kolga Tbilisi Photo festival “Accidental portraits'." Tbilisi (Georgia), 2020

Tbilisi Art Fair TAF, Tbilisi (Georgia), 2023

Dubai Art Fair (2024) Dubai, UAE