EZOLOGIA — Porous Body of Tbilisi
An exhibition asking how the typology of the Tbilisian Courtyard shapes the city’s urban fabric—analytical maps, archival documents, photo essays and film, alongside our installation on reclaiming the imagination of the city.
- Date
- Format
- Exhibition
- Venue
- Karvasla — Tbilisi History Museum
- Location
- Tbilisi, Georgia
EZOLOGIA — Porous Body of Tbilisi’s first exhibition presented analytical maps, architectural research, graphic studies, archival documents (among others from the Tbilisi History Museum’s), video materials, and photo essays by contemporary Georgian photographers Berika Beridze, Nanka Dolidze, and Gio Sumbadze. As well as, video works and films exploring how the Tbilisian Courtyard is depicted in Georgian Cinema. Video works also featured student films produced under the guidance of O’Brien Van der Steen Architecture Studio in 2018, and a piece exploring how the Tbilisian Courtyard is depicted in Georgian Cinema.
The exhibition responds to a single question: how the typology of the Tbilisian Courtyard shapes the city’s urban fabric.
The research behind the exhibition was carried out by a growing group of collaborators, including NWDS, Ubani, wit[h]nessing, studio2AM, art historian Tatia Gvineria, architect Natalia Vasadze, sociologist Mariam Jibuti, and other independent researchers across different fields. The project also included contributions from young professionals who collected the cartographic data through fieldwork mapping in spring 2026.
Our installation engaged with the imagination of the city against a backdrop of social, political, and ecological upheavals. The display was centered around the speculative storytelling workshop [UN]COMMON THREADS: Reclaiming Imagination of the City alongside research into visual and literary archives. By imagining radical futures intricately entangled with fragments of the past, the work questions the technocratic scenarios prescribed by systems of power.
Foregrounding the marginalised perspectives of human and more-than-human actors, the installation opens a space where alternative modes of coexistence become conceivable—inviting the viewer into a constellation of photographs, poems, and speculative narratives to revisit both past and future.
Project Initiators
NWDS: Nata Tatunashvili, Aleksandre Gaprindashvili, Natia Katamadze, Olga Vakhrameeva, Ana Petriashvili, Alexander Kachalov, Salome Gabashvili
Ubani — Tbilisi Cityscape Research Center: David Brodsky, Ana Chorgolashvili, Nata Tatunashvili, Mariam Gabritchidze, Lia Gulbani, Nino Kevlishvili
Project Collaborators
studio2AM: Annamaria Chelidze, Megi Davitidze
wit[h]nessing: Tatuli Japoshvili, Tina Jelia, Giga Tsikarishvili
Tatia Gvineria
Exhibition Curatorial Team
Ana Chorgolashvili (Archive and Research)
Natia Katamadze
Nata Tatunashvili
Exhibition Participants
Nina Akhobadze, Berika Beridze, David Brodsky, Annamaria Chelidze, Megi Davitidze, Nanka Dolidze, Aleksandre Gaprindashvili, Tatia Gvineria, Tatuli Japoshvili, Tina Jelia, Ana Petriashvili, Sasha Sokolova, Gio Sumbadze, Giga Tsikarishvili, Olga Vakhrameeva (Varm), Natalia Vasadze
Exhibition Host and Partner
Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi History Museum
Supported by
Tbilisi City Hall, Château Mukhrani
Media Partner
Homeis.ge
Special thanks to the National Archives of Georgia, Levan Kalandarishvili, Tsiko Jankarashvili, and O’Brien Van der Steen architecture studio.