Our presentation explores the essence of girlhood, capturing the lived experiences of young women in Georgia today. Featuring the works of Mariam Akhobadze, Nina Akhobadze, Mariam Aqubardia, Gvantsa Jishkariani, Nata Varazi., this exhibition is both an artistic statement and a reflection of The Why Not Gallery’s ethos—a space where vulnerability is expressed with boldness.
The selected works explore themes of personal identity, self-expression, and gender roles, with focus on the impact of fairy tales, fantasy, and media. They navigate the duality of empowerment, the tension and the importance of female solidarity and support systems.
Nina Akhobadze’s Untitled (2024) embodies her intuitive, emotionally charged approach to abstraction. Working with oil on large canvases, she creates richly textured surfaces where fluid, interwoven forms evoke psychological tension and introspection. In this piece, muted greens, ochres, blues, and shadowy blacks coalesce in a dynamic composition that feels alive with emotional undercurrents. The interplay between dense, brooding forms and softer, ethereal hues suggests a search for equilibrium—between heaviness and lightness, structure and dissolution. Akhobadze’s refusal to title her works invites open-ended engagement, privileging sensory experience over fixed narrative. Her paintings are not meant to be deciphered, but felt—meditations on vulnerability, presence, and the quiet complexity of emotional life.
The tactile quality of the surface underscores her deep connection to materiality, while also serving as a metaphor for internal landscapes. In Untitled, Akhobadze invites viewers into a raw, poetic space where emotion, intuition, and form flow into one another.
Mariam Aqubardia’s Shakal Gave Birth to Her Children (2025) is a haunting meditation on exile, memory, and maternal ambiguity. Drawing on her academic training and childhood experiences in the occupied region of Gali, Aqubardia blends realism with surreal, melancholic imagery. The painting features two lifeless doll-like figures—one resembling Pinocchio, the other a vacant-eyed toy—symbols of disrupted childhood and lost innocence. A Shakal strides above them, embodying a cold, predatory maternal presence, subverting the nurturing suggestion of the title.
The stark, institutional backdrop amplifies the emotional desolation, evoking themes of abandonment, trauma, and emotional detachment. Aqubardia’s recurring motif of dolls functions as a powerful metaphor for innocence marred by conflict, standing as mute witnesses to violence and displacement. With its suspended, dreamlike atmosphere, the work becomes a poignant reflection on the psychological residue of war—where memory lingers like smoke, and the ache of dislocation quietly persists.
Mariam Akhobadze’s figurative paintings depict androgynous gymnasts caught in moments of suspended motion, immersed in solitude and timelessness. Though rooted in academic technique, her work transcends mere figuration to become psychological portraits and metaphors for the delicate dilemmas of human experience. The sparse, ambiguous settings—marked by minimal details like vintage furniture or garments—evoke a haunting, dreamlike atmosphere where time feels paused. Her figures often appear frozen, observed from behind, inviting the viewer into a voyeuristic role while maintaining emotional distance. This choice heightens the sense of alienation and introspection that defines her work.
Despite their proximity, the subjects remain unreachable—lost in personal rituals of balance and endurance. The quiet tension between stillness and movement, presence and absence, creates a world both nostalgic and uncertain. Akhobadze’s paintings ultimately reflect on the fragility of connection and the invisible struggles we carry, offering a subtle yet powerful meditation on isolation, time, and identity.
Gvantsa Jishkariani’s mosaic work, Turmoil Galore, blends Soviet-propagandistic art with traditional Georgian craft, re-imagining historical forms through a contemporary lens. Rooted in the aesthetics of veneration found in Christian and Soviet-era mosaics, her compact compositions transform abstract and figurative fragments into symbolic relics. Arcs of deep green, yellow, black and grey conjure dreamlike seascapes—suspended on stone bead strands that blur the line between ornament, jewelry and object.
Jishkariani infuses the traditionally permanent, sacred medium with humor and intimacy, making space for whimsy.
A self-taught painter with a background in law, Nata Varazi brings a deeply intuitive and symbolic approach to her art, drawing from surrealist traditions and personal mythology. In I hear you purring inside, I feel you licking my wounds (2025), she explores vulnerability, interiority, and the porous boundary between the human and natural world. A ginger cat—rendered in striking clarity—emerges from an abstract, layered human form that evokes petals, garments, or armor. This central figure, suggestive of both body and ritual object, holds a quiet, sacred stillness. The cat, a symbol of intuition and healing, occupies a liminal inner space, representing retreat and regeneration. With its dreamlike palette and fluid transitions between the corporeal and symbolic, the painting reflects Varazi’s signature “tender strangeness.” Through such intimate and evocative imagery, she contributes a unique voice to Georgian contemporary painting—one grounded in metaphor, mystery, and emotional resonance.