Georgian artists' works go online in videogame form

Artwork from participating creatives' collections seen in the online display. Screenshot from the exhibition.

Agenda.ge, 01 Apr 2020 - 17:31, Tbilisi,Georgia

As the physical art scenes remain in shutdown due to the new coronavirus outbreak, works by over 30 Georgian creatives explore the "new reality" in a digital group show available in videogame form on the internet.

What happens after the "bad dream" of social isolation amid a global pandemic ends? What are the days spent in self-isolation, in front of screens and loneliness, like? The display takes aim at these and other questions with its selection of works that also exist in the physical realm.

Conceived by Mariam Natroshvili and Detu Jincharadze, of the 'sadarismelia' duo, All this might be a dream takes up a dual task of providing a new exposition while galleries and museum spaces are shuttered, and exploring the conditions of the paralysed social realm itself.

The emptiness of the dream now stands in the streets of many countries. An emptiness that brings huge space and time to self-reflect. To think about feelings, locked boundaries, delayed trips and affairs, loneliness, fear, others, expectations, mistakes, once-missed calls" - summary for the show

The works are located in spaces created or re-created based on physical venues in Garikula. Screenshot from the game.

Taking digital versions of the physical artwork in selection, the show brings them to a digitally modelled replica of a 19th century venue of Art Villa Garikula, a community of artists in central Georgian countryside that hosts annual Fest i Nova art festival.

The name of this place ’Garikuli’ (Eng: outcast), today has become the name of the people locked up in self-isolation," organisers of the online exhibition remarked in their description of the project.

In the digital creation, the exhibition is placed on a map navigated by users in a similar way to first-person three-dimensional videogames. The Garikula chateau is recreated along with an adjacent gallery space housing the selected works.

With the latter drawn from workshops and collections of the artists, All this might be a dream is seen as the first online exhibition in videogame form on the Georgian scene.