My trans-disciplinary art practice looks at culture as a primary catalyst for social change.
I create environments and immersive installations that, in pre-COVID times, morphed into extensive social sculptures where communal events such as dinners and dance parties occurred. In doing so, I question canonical truths, emphasizing identity-construction, representation, and archive. These installations are modular steel structures and serve as self-sustained display systems for paintings, tapestries, curtains, objects, and neons. As the pandemic made impossible communal, shared experiences, my focus has shifted to art-making as a form of knowledge production and sharing. I am committed to delinking from universalized (western) forms and norms of looking, interpreting, and representing the world. In the process of transitioning from a normative understanding of myself as a gay man with a Georgian upbringing, I embrace myself as a queer person from Eurasia while questioning my place and role in a globalized world.
Queerness, behavioral patterns, intersectionality, language, and ecology encompass my current frameworks. Through these lenses, I revisit the most intimate settings of my childhood—the rooms with heavily patterned wallpapers and tiles where my earliest traumas took place, and my consciousness was formed. As opposed to "illustration," I use "embodiment" as a primary creative strategy. I create "rooms" as psychological tableaus that can be experienced as two-dimensional images, environments, public sculptures, and VR installations. Personal and historical memory and trauma thus collapse into an experience through which the self may be healed and re-constituted.
Every new step in my practice starts with exploring non-artistic materials and techniques that, to my understanding, most precisely embody concerns I'm interested in. Throughout the past five years, I have addressed the idea of fluidity and the impossibility of capturing the now by experimenting with industrial paint (liquid mirror) as means of transforming images into reflective surfaces. Currently, my conceptual focus is on microbiological and psychological foundations of the human mind, the modular nature of our behavioral patterns, and all living organisms' interconnectivity. To address these topics, I have begun to explore natural latex, which is widely used for clinical and erotic- purposes, and various metal paper sheets as foundations for imagery. Modular and repetitive, these images are inspired by the Georgian alphabet and my childhood floral patterns and are transferred through monotype and screen-printing.
EDUCATION
2008-2010
Postgraduate Studies in Combined Artistic Languages, IUNA (National University of Art of Buenos Aires) Argentina;
1997-2003
Tbilisi State Academy of Fine Arts;
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES
2020
Peter S.Reed Foundation Grant for Mixed Media / Sculpture;
New York Foundation of Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program;
2019
Creative Time, Grant for X Summit Creative Dinners (with Elene Damenia);
AIM fellowship, The Bronx Museum of the Arts;
2018
NARS Foundation Studio Residency, Brooklyn;
2014
FABLES Commission grant for Public Art Projects, National Endowments for Arts, New York City;
2011
Emerging Artist of 2011. Movistar Arte Jóven 2011, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
2010
The 3rd Award for the Drawing, Premio Museo Metropolitano, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
TALKS & PANELS
2019
“What is Political?” moderator of the panel with Monika Sosnowska (artist) and Sohrab Mohebbi (curator, SculptureCenter NY), Tbilisi Art Fair Talk Series, Organized by Kunsthalle Tbilisi;
“Contemporary Georgian Art Now,” panelist. Moderated by Dr. Heike Fuhlbruegge, Berlin Art Fair Talk Series;
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
National Art Museum of China, Beijing;
Georgian National Museum, Mestia;
Tbilisi Silk Museum, Georgia;
SOLO AND TWO-PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2020
"Levani's Room: Pretty Like A Girl" Marisa Newman Projects (forthcoming);
2019
“Now is Always Someone Else,” NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY;
"89.19" Berlin Art Fair, Germany;
“I Should Have Kissed You Longer,” TAF’19, Tbilisi, Georgia;
2018
“In Search of The Miraculous” NADA Miami Beach;
“Non_Place: Levan Mindiashvili, Grant Wells,” SFA Projects, NYC;
2017
“Here”, Georgian National Museum, Mestia;
“In-Between”, State Silk Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Shifting Identities,” VOLTA NY;
2016
“Night Intervention” Uta Bekaia+Levan Mindiashvili, State Silk Museum, Georgia;
“Unintended Archeology, Levan Mindiashvili+Uta Bekaia,” The Lodge Gallery, NYC;
2015
“Kiosk,” ODETTA, Brooklyn, NY;
“Suites For Unintended Archeology,” The Vazquez Building, Brooklyn, NY;
2014
“Borderlines”, The Lodge Gallery, New York City, NY;
2013
“Whispers,” ArtArea Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Urban Identities,” Kunstraub99, Cologne, Germany;
2011
“Intimidades Mobiles,” NES Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
2009
“Levan Mindiashvili: Performances,” part of ArtIsterium 09, II International Forum of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, Georgia;
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (selection)
2019
“In Search of The Miraculous,” Shau Fenster, Berlin, Germany;
“Surrogate histories / projected remains,” Project: ARTspace, NYC;
“Lucky Draw,” SculptureCenter, NY;
“BRIC Biennial Vol.3,” BRIC, Brooklyn, NY;
“Image and Its Likeness,” Museum of Modern Art, Tbilisi;
2018
“Black & Noir,” Galerie Youn, Montreal, Canada;
“Down The Line...” NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY:
“What We Loved Was Not Enough,” Super Dutchess, New York, NY;
“RE:21 This Is Not Here,” Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, NY;
“The Border No.1,” The Border Project Space, Brooklyn, NY;
“Hot Stuff,” ODETTA, Brooklyn, NY;
“Tbilisi… Tbilisi,” Project ArtBeat, Tbilisi;
2017
The 7th Beijing International Art Biennale, National Art Museum of China;
“True Believers,” David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Brooklyn, NY;
“Limits of My City,” Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi;
2016
“Shaping Identities,” Tbilisi History Museum, Georgia;
“Eco Impulse,” Tbilisi Literature Museum, Georgia;
“Future Memory,” Art Villa Garikula, Georgia;
“Shaping Identities,” Arsenal Museum, Kiev, Ukraine;
“Green,” The National Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Aesthetics of Repair in Contemporary Georgia,” Tartu Art Museum, Estonia;
“A Room of One's Own: An Exhibition,” The Clemente, NYC;
2015
“Structures,” The Manny Cantor Center, NYC;
“HERITAGE,” RichMix Arts Center, London, UK;
2014
“Crossing The Boundaries.03,” AT388, Rotterdam, The Netherlands;
2013
“HERITAGE,” Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“For Which It Stands,” The Lodge Gallery, New York City, NY;
2012
“MAN/kind,” 32 Jones Gallery, Jersey City, NJ;
Summer Show, Fundacion Mundo Nuevo, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
2011
Movistar Arte Joven 2011, Centro Cultural Borges, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
“Seres Encontrados,” “Objeto a” art gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
2010
ArtIsterium 10, III International Forum of Contemporary Art, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Projects,” Isidro Miranda Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
“Vectores Invertidos,” Laguanacazul Art Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
“Heterodoxa02,” Nes_zona 54 Art Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
2009
“Negro Barocco,” Encontre Arte Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
“New Generation,” Gallery Arsi, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Kunst Raub #003,” Galerie Kunstraub99, Cologne, Germany;
2008
“Heterodoxa01,” Salon Dorado, Teatro Roma, Buenos Aires, Argentina;
“Weltreise der Sinne,” IKV Bonn, Germany;
2007
“Perdue,” GalerieD’Art Paris8, Paris, France;
2006
“The Lost Ones,” Gallery Universe, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Georgian Visual Art,” National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia;
2005
“Tbilisi Impronte,” Gallery Borgo Arte, Borgomanero, Italy;
“Figurative Art Studio.02,” Gallery Universe, Tbilisi, Georgia;
“Kunst Aus Georgien.03,” Gallery CultiG7, Mannheim, Germany;
2004
“Figurative Art Studio.01,” Gallery Universe, Tbilisi, Georgia;
2003
“Kunst Aus Georgien.02,” Gallery CultiG7, Mannheim, Germany.