Mariana Chkonia Exhibition, London
Mariana Chkonia (b. 1969) is an artist who lives and works between Tbilisi and Nukriani. In her prac- tice, she revives ancient felting traditions that have existed for centuries in the Tusheti, Kakheti, Khevi and Javakheti regions of Georgia. Today, these techniques have all but fallen out of use, and so Chkonia combines archival research with her own interpretation of felting methods to create her monumental, sculptural textile works: “I wanted to do something that I could not imagine, and make it bigger than myself. I wanted something to happen in the process that would drive me crazy,” she has said of producing her pieces.
At once strikingly contemporary and ancient, Chkonia’s textile works draw on her fascination with craft and from her own childhood in a family of architects and film-makers. “I felt that if I combined everything from my past, architecture and model-making, which I witnessed all my childhood, it would accumulate all the things that I have retained in me,” she has said. “After reaching a certain age, I kept obsessing over the thought of collecting all the goodness from my family, like gathering pearls in my palm. This inner state brought me to textiles.”
