Mariam Aqubardia (b. 1991, Gali) graduated from the Faculty of Painting at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (2013 BA, 2017 MA). As she describes, all of her artworks are about Abkhazia and her memories of the home she had to flee as a result of the Abkhazian Conflict (1993-1994). The hardest and most difficult feelings and experiences are painted in calm, foggy melancholy and discuss the topics of home, displacement, and questions of belonging.
Mariam’s works have been exhibited in Georgia and abroad, including the exhibition supported by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, 2020, Tbilisi Online Biennale, 2020, ‘Personal Structures’, parallel event at the 57th Venice Art Biennale, Palazzo Mora, Venice, 2017, ‘Art from Georgia’ group show, Phoenix Gallery, New York, 2016. In 2019, her project ‘Citrus Trees Covered against the Frost’ won the Heinrich Boell Foundation competition ‘Bauhaus’ and was implemented at the Station Square in Tbilisi and The Why Not Gallery hosted her solo show in 2021 “Sometimes Water Burst Out of Dried Up Fountains”, and second solo exhibition: "Painted Walls Create an Illusion of Reality" in 2022.
