venice biennale 2023: georgian pavilion on space, time, politics

‘January, February, March’ at the venice biennale 2023

Curated by the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, the Georgian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale will be home to ‘January, February, March’ — an installation representing dead and living nature through the story of an artificially altered settlement in the Dusheti region of Georgia. More specifically, the pavilion will symbolically focus on water reservoirs, their creation and their impacts in the age of rapid political transformations and climate change. Designers and architects Gigi Shukakidze, Oto Nemsadze, and Tinatin Gurgenidze teamed up to devise the installation, generating a series of questions along the way.

‘January, February, March’ – Venice Biennale 2023 | images © Tobias Schmitt, Gigi Shukakidze

exploring how manmade orders impact natural flows

‘How temporary is our footprint on the environment? When we mention the flows of energy, migration, time, and the outflow of the landscape itself, what flows are we really speaking of? What are the costs of disrupting an order to create a new one? Can we take water as a determinant of order? To what extent can the spatial-political development of humans bring changes in nature and society and vice versa? What physical and conceptual forms fade or remain with such transformations? Are the natural creations – their memory, history, and artifacts signifying their past life – permanent? What will be the vestige of defining such places, and, above all – considering both global and local contexts – what is their future?’

The Georgian Pavilion will be hosted by the art-space II Giardino Bianco throughout the time of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, held from May 20th until November 26th, 2023.

the pavilion will symbolically focus on water reservoirs

representing dead + living nature through the story of an artificially altered settlement in Dusheti

exploring manmade impacts and orders on nature

project info:

name: January, February, March

program: Venice Architecture Biennale 2023, 18th edition

curated by: Tbilisi Architecture Biennial | @tbilisiarchitecturebiennial, with the support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth of Georgia.
design: Gigi Shukakidze, Oto Nemsadze, Tinatin Gurgenidze

project team: Giorgi Vardiashvili Alexi Soselia Stefano Tornieri Pola Lado Kandashvili Giorgi Kartvelishvili Elene Pasuri Tamara Janashia Tato Kotetishvili

commissioner: Magda Guruli

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edited by: lea zeitoun | designboom