Video installation by Mariam Natroshvili, Detu Jincharadze selected as Georgia's Venice Biennale display
Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze have teamed up on a multitude of projects involving mediums of VR, video and videogames. Photo via sadarismelia.com.
Tweet 
Share
A Virtual Reality-based installation by artists Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze has been selected as Georgia's display at the next Venice Biennale, with their project I Pity the Garden to represent the country at the international event starting in April.
Presented by the In-between Conditions platform, the installation explores a vision of inevitable change in natural and cultural landscapes using VR as its centrepiece, while being also accompanied by a "large-scale video installation", a summary from the platform said.
Selected by a national committee out of two projects, I Pity the Garden is characterised as a "surreal, dystopian environment" visitors are invited to experience while envisioning developments spurred and shaped by events from climate change to regional and global "turmoil and transformation".
Curated by Vato Urushadze, Khatia Tchokhonelidze and Giorgi Spanderashvili, the work comes from the two creatives who have used mediums of VR, video and videogames in their recent displays and installations.
???? Get ready to update your calendar!
— La Biennale di Venezia (@la_Biennale) December 17, 2021
Check out our #SaveTheDates and make sure not to miss #LaBiennalediVenezia's activities → https://t.co/mdI0d1mVpg#BiennaleCarnevale2022#BiennaleArte2022#BiennaleTeatro2022#BiennaleDanza2022#BiennaleCinema2022#BiennaleMusica2022 pic.twitter.com/2q30QImB5m
Last month, an immersive non-fiction visual project produced by the artists and taking a look at the urban architecture of Georgia's capital Tbilisi was selected among projects screening at the ongoing DocLab Competition of this year's International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
They also featured in a group exhibition at Tbilisi Photography and Multimedia Museum earlier this year that explored cultural reference in videogames and multimedia, and conceived All this might be a dream, an online display in videogame form, last year.
For seven months between spring and fall next year, the 59th edition of the famed art occasion will host visitors to its display curated by Cecilia Alemani, the first Italian woman selected for the position. Alemani, who in 2017 curated the Italian pavilion at the biennial, is currently director and chief curator of High Line Art, a public art programme in the New York urban park.
The biennial will be hosted around the theme entitled The Milk of Dreams, taking the name from a book by Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and built on a concept of an "imaginary journey through metamorphoses of the body and definitions of humanity."
In 2019, the Georgian pavilion at that year's biennial was named among the best from central and eastern European states by Blok Magazine, with the installation REARMIRRORVIEW Simulation is Simulation, is Simulation, is Simulation by artist Anna K.E. finding its spot in the selection.