Nina Kintsurashvili (b. 1992) is a Tbilisi-based multidisciplinary artist working in a wide range of mediums. However, she often turns to the traditional painterly surface as her basal realm of artistic contemplation. Although abstract in its representation, her research- based process allows Kintsurashvili’s paintings to reference key Georgian visual codes resurfacing in the cultural vortex and explore heritage as a political commodity, with its self-imposed or involuntary negligence. Artist carefully studies collected visual material that arrives at her uncluttered studio in a lab-like manner. These are gathered from field visits to archaeological sites and searching through pre-archived Soviet archeological data from Russian-occupied territories. Kintsurashvili, in staging such an environment, creates an opportunity for mental contamination, just slightly so that she still stands liberated in front of the canvas, allowing the abstracted vision to surpass.

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Deconstructions, reflection, and mirroring concern Nina Kintsurashvili’s abstract paintings, where imagery of the collective subconscious and streams of auto-generated thoughts metamorphose into pneumatic forms floating in the abyss, disregarding perspective. Only the perforations in what seems like a new-age tissue expose the traces of ancient environments priorly observed by the artist. Quasi-figurative shapes are caught up in a constant stir of erasing and regeneration. Although entirely formal in its nature, this fractionality has physical reference points: the vandalized, overpainted, and flaked murals in Georgian monasteries, some of which are architecturally excavated in rocks, only allowing a pierced tunnel vision. As an imperial act of Russian colonialization, In 19th-century Georgia, medieval frescoes were whitewashed and painted over by contemporary Russian artists in an attempt to excavate and replace the culture or completely erase it. Since gaining independence in the 90s, efforts were put in by Georgian restorers to uncover original frescos, where Nina Kintsurashvili witnessed two images from different periods lay bare next to one another, clashing and fighting for the wall space. Poetic yet political was that memory for her, and the same could be said about her paintings.