Tina Natsvlishvili

SHARED GROUNDS was on view at KURORTI @kuro_rti , Tbilisi from 28 March to 5 April 2026 Many thanks to the wonderful KURORTI team and to all participating artists. Installation views from the exhibition, featuring works by @annajermolaewa2 @bel.kamkaze @emma_kling @lorenzkunath @linusriepler @mimaschwahn 📸 @sopho_kobidze

SHARED GROUNDS opens on 28 March 2026, 6 pm A group exhibition bringing together works by Anna Jermolaewa @annajermolaewa2 , Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński @bel.kamkaze , Emma Kling @emma_kling , Lorenz Kunath @lorenzkunath , Linus Riepler @linusriepler , and Mima Schwahn @mimaschwahn The exhibition reflects on questions of power, political pressure, and individual and collective forms of dissent. 📍 KURORTI კურორტი @kuro_rti 
10 Zurab Kvlividze Turn
Tbilisi, Georgia On view: 28 March – 5 April 2026 Curated by Tina Natsvlishvili With kind support of Federal Ministry Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport Republic of Austria @kunstkulturministerium Image credits: 2. Anna Jermolaewa, Singing Revolution, 3-channel video installation, 28 min. each, 2022 © Scott Clifford Evans 3. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, still from Untitled, K.T.C.I. (2024), © Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński 4. Emma Kling, Seth Price, 2022, oil on canvas, 110x73cm © Emma Kling 5. Lorenz Kunath, yet untitled (drive my car angrily), 2026, mixed media, 50x29x3cm © Lorenz Kunath 6. Linus Riepler, Foosball Studies 1, detail, 2025, mixed media, 20x20x20 cm © Linus Riepler 7. Mima Schwahn, Spelunker, 2024, stucco marble, 20x13x7 cm © Mima Schwahn

Chiku Komiya’s new sound installation for KUMANONISUMU!2025 is based on recordings of dialogues with AI, made while walking along the Kumano-Kodo pilgrimage route. Four speakers release these layered conversations between artist and machine, while a projected, AI-generated diagram depicts the dialogue’s structural dynamics. In earlier times, pilgrims discovered new selves through repeated inner dialogues along the demanding paths of Kumano. Komiya’s work reconstructs the voices of pilgrims within today’s media environment, where inner reflection is increasingly replaced by conversations with artificial intelligence. The disembodied voices that echo as “tongues without bodies” through the installation stand as symbols of pilgrimage and faith, while at the same time reflecting on AI’s role as our closest listener - and perhaps even as an emerging object of worship. this intimacy is fraught with risk: it opens a porous space in which capitalism and political propaganda may infiltrate our newest counsellor. The installation invites us to reflect, reconsider, and listen for what new forms of attention and devotion might arise when the closest companion on the path is an AI. @chikukomiya 小宮知久は、熊野古道を歩きながらAIとの対話を録音した音源を基とした新作サウンドインスタレーションを「KUMANONISUMU!2025」のために制作した。中央に配置された4つのスピーカーから、アーティストと機械の重層的な対話が流れ、AIによって生成されたこの対話の動的構造を示すダイアグラム（図表）が投影される。 古来、巡礼者たちは熊野の険しい道中で繰り返される内なる対話を通じて新たな自己を発見した。小宮の作品は、内省が人工知能との対話に置き換えられつつある現代のメディア環境において、巡礼者の声を再構築する。 本インスタレーションに「身体なき舌」として反響する無身体の声は、巡礼と信仰の象徴であると同時に、AIが私たちの最も身近な聞き手として、ひいては新たな崇拝の対象として台頭する可能性を映し出す。この親密さはある種の危険を孕んでいる――資本主義や政治的プロパガンダが私たちの新たなカウンセラー（AI）へ入り込む余地を開く。 このインスタレーションは、巡礼の道程で最も身近なパートナーがAIとなる時、どのような新しい欲求と献身が生まれるのか、私たちに思索し、再考し、耳を傾けるよう促す。 #kumanonisumu2025 #kumano #japan #artistinresidence #sitespecificart

フェイス, 2025 Elsa Okazaki’s photographic series for KUMANONISUMU! 2025 unfolds as a dialogue between portrait and place, between individual memory and the landscapes or objects that sustain it. The work appears as an intimate folio of women and their relationships with a region steeped in spirituality. Each image pairs a woman from Kumano with a site or thing she holds close. Brief texts anchor each portrait, reminding us that identity is not abstract but bound to lived spaces, gestures and relationships. Installed in public spaces across Kumano City, the works occupy the infrastructure of everyday visibility. In these familiar sites, where residents and visitors move along their daily routes, the portraits meet them in passing, opening a space for recognition. Where advertising usually sets the rhythm, the works sketch a cartography of relations: the city as an album of shared places, the everyday walk as an encounter. In a broader, translocal sense, Okazaki’s project grows from a simple, demanding question: how do we recognize ourselves in others? Rather than emphasizing distance or difference, the work seeks proximity and common ground - the subtle threads of daily life through which experiences resonate across cultures. The images are not neutral - the women portrayed stand with dignity in familiar surroundings, offering fragments of their lives, occurring within a wider constellation: the universality of attachment, of memory, of affection for what feels like home. The title フェイス (pronounced feisu) plays on the ambiguity of English homophones: in Japanese, “face” and “faith” are indistinguishable in sound, allowing the work to oscillate between face and belief. 📸 @elsaokazaki #kumanonisumu!2025 #artinpublicspace #artistinresidence #kumano #japan

UNFOLDING BEYOND, 2025 For KUMANONISUMU! 2025, Midori Mitamura immersed herself in the daily act of photographing, suspending the pressure of “completion” and instead embracing the moments when images guided her toward unforeseen visions. Her installation presents a sensitive observation of the everyday in Kumano: ordinary objects, landscapes, situations, and people in their unremarkable states are captured in fleeting photographs and film sequences, then assembled into a visual diary. Projected in the exhibition space and ordered by exact days, this diary unfolds as a record of ephemera moments of life. Some of these moments reappear as small amorphous elements placed within the exhibition space, giving tangible form to the contents of the projection and extending the act of observation into the physical environment. Each transient image is both a trace of the present and an affirmation of being alive, gradually opening into new perspectives. The journey unfolded like uneven stone steps pressed into the earth by generations of Shugendō ascetics. Midori Mitamura’s work opens thresholds for viewers, inviting them to cross into spaces where attention, perception, and the ordinary are reconfigured within the very act of seeing. KUMANONISUMU! 2025 において彼女は、写真を撮るという日常的な行為に身を委ね、「完成」への圧力から解放されることで、むしろイメージが思いがけないヴィジョンへと導く瞬間を受け入れた。このプロセスは、欲望の対象を追い求めることではなく、むしろ現れるものに対して心を開く姿勢である。 彼女のインスタレーションは、熊野の日常を繊細に観察したものである。平凡なオブジェや風景、状況、人々の何気ない姿が、刹那的な写真や映像としてとらえられ、ひとつの視覚的日記へと編まれている。それは展示空間において日付ごとに投影され、人生のはかなき瞬間を記録するものとして立ち上がる。また、そのいくつかは小さな不定形の要素として空間内に再出現し、投影の内容に触覚的な形を与え、観察の行為を物理的な環境へと拡張している。 この制作態度は、祈りと省察を込めて幾世紀にもわたり歩まれてきた熊野古道の巡礼と共鳴する。三田村は熊野の日常の風景やリズムに寄り添いながら、地域の肖像を描くのではなく、地理に縛られることのない普遍的な自己像を探し求めた。それぞれの刹那的なイメージは、現在の痕跡であると同時に、生きていることそのものの肯定でもあり、やがて新たな視座へと開かれていく。その道程は、修験道の行者たちが幾世代にもわたって踏み固めた不揃いな石段を歩むことにも似ている。 三田村光土里の作品は、観る者に新たな閾を開き、注意や感覚、そして日常そのものが「見る」という行為の只中で再構成される場へと、彼らを誘うのである 📸 1,2,4,5 by @elsaokazaki

Japanese landscapes 42x29,7 cm Ink, felt-tip pen on paper Sophia Tabatadze first visited Japan fifteen years ago, and during KUMANONISUMU!2025, she has returned as an artist in residence. On both journeys she was struck by the presence of the concrete grids that line Japan’s hilly regions. Designed to prevent landslides, these vast structures retrace the shapes of cliffs and forested slopes, folding human engineering into the very language of the landscape.  Fascinated by their peculiar duality – at once human-made, yet carrying the logic of the landscape – Tabatadze chose them as the focus of a new cycle of drawings. The formations align closely with her ongoing project “Graphic Geographies” a visual idiom in which geographical shapes are distilled into lines of clarity and rhythm. In her work, the geometric patterns of concrete, fusing artificial structure and organic shape, stand as a metaphorical counterpart to her ongoing exploration of what is unfamiliar, while conversing with forms long presented in her artistic vocabulary. The series comprises fifteen drawings, each mounted in a fabric frame sewn specifically for this project. This presentation gestures toward Japan’s textile and curtain traditions, evoking the ways cloth has been woven into everyday life. Text: @inter.act.pr Tina Natsvilishvili co-curator of @kumanonisumu KUMANONISUMU!2025

▪️KUMANONISUMU! 2025▪️ Artists in Residence Kumano August 1 – September 7, 2025 This year’s edition @kumanonisumu brings together international and local artists in Kumano to explore unfamiliar perspectives through site-specific and participatory practices. With works by: Chiku Komiya @chikukomiya Sophia Tabatadze @sophia.tabatadze Midori Mitamura @midori_mitamura Elsa Okazaki @elsaokazaki ▪️EXHIBITION OPENING August 29, 2025 | 5:00 PM ▪️Artist Talks August 30, 2025 10 AM Chiku Komiya 11 AM Sophia Tabatadze August 31, 2025 10 AM Elsa Okazaki 11 AM Midori Mitamura ▪️Curator-led Guided Tours September 1 & 3, 2025 📍KUMANO KODO-KAN Kinomoto cho 517-1, Kumano-shi, Mie, Japan 📍Several public spaces across Kumano City

PROGRAM 2025 📍EXHIBITION 展覧会オープニング 2025年8月29日（金）17:00〜 世界遺産熊野古道館での展覧会オープニングにぜひお越しください。 ウェルカムレセプションのあと、午後5時30分か らアーティストと一緒に木本町のまち中に展示 された作品巡りを行います。 場所 : 世界遺産熊野古道館 熊野市木本町517-1 開館時間: 9時〜13時、14時〜17時 9 月2日火曜日休館 Exhibition Opening & Reception August 29, 2025 | 5:00 PM We cordially invite you to the opening of the exhibition at Kumano Kodo-kan. Following the welcome reception, at 5:30 PM, we will walk together with the artists through the streets of the Kinomoto neighborhood to discover artworks in public spaces and encounter stories along the way. Location: Kumano Kodo-Kan Kinomoto cho 517-1, Kumano-shi 📍ARTIST TALKS アーティストトーク 8月30日 (土) 10時 – 小宮知久 Chiku Komiya 11時 – ソフィア・タバタッツェ Sophia Tabatadze 8月31日 ( 日) 10時 – エルザ・岡崎 Elsa Okazaki 11時 – 三田村光土里 Midori Mitamura 場所 : 世界遺産熊野古道館 熊野市木本町517-1 開館時間: 9時〜13時、14時〜17時 9 月2日火曜日休館 Artist Talks: August 30, 2025 10 AM - Chiku Komiya 11 AM - Sophia Tabatadze August 31, 2025 10 AM - Midori Mitamura 11 AM - Elsa Okazaki Location: Kumano Kodo-Kan Kinomoto cho 517-1, Kumano-shi 📍ART TOUR キュレーターによるガイドツアー 展示会場をキュレーターと一緒に巡ります。 9月1日 (月)・3日 (水)｜午前10時 集合場所：世界遺産熊野古道館 熊野市木本町517-1 Curator-led Guided Tours: September 1 & 3, 2025 Meeting point: Kumano Kodo-kan Kinomoto cho 517-1, Kumano-sh

We are happy to welcome Elsa Okazaki to KUMANONISUMU!2025 ✨ Elsa Okazaki is French-Japanese visual artist based in Vienna. After many years in the film and advertising industry, she shifted her focus to the visual arts, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Since 2007, her practice has spanned photography, video, and curatorial work, with exhibitions internationally. Okazaki’s work is grounded in questions of identity, conditioned by her multicultural background that weaves together European and Japanese influences. The body plays a central role, becoming a medium to reflect personal experiences and the complexity of human existence. At the same time, she interrogates with the representation of femininity - challenging stereotypes, questioning concepts of gender, and opening up space for alternative perspectives. Working across analogue and digital photography, she explores the distinct possibilities of each medium to develop new forms of expression. Image 1: Daidokoro no yōkai, (c) Elsa Okazaki Image 2: Portrait, photo by Ernst Lima #kumanonisumu #kumanonisumu2025 #artistinresidenceprogram #elsaokazaki #contemporaryphotography #sitespecificart #kumano #japan

We are delighted to have Midori Mitamura as part of KUMANONISUMU! 2025 ✨ Midori Mitamura is a Tokyo-based visual artist known for her immersive spatial installations. Her work weaves together photographs, videos, music, and found objects to create “three-dimensional dramas” that explore both personal and collective memories. Notable projects include Art & Breakfast, a series that combines art installations with communal breakfast gatherings. She has exhibited internationally, including at the Secession in Vienna (2006), the Aichi Triennale (2016), and the Setouchi Triennale (2022). Mitamura’s art often reflects on the emotional narratives of everyday life, seeking to connect individual experiences with wider historical and cultural contexts. „I evoke in space visions drawn from the intersection of myself and the world, led by memories and traces embedded in objects and places. Fragments of other lives - past and present - drift like afterimages, losing their contours over time. I weave them into “dramas one can step into,” where reality and unreality meet, and stories without endings quietly relive their existence across all boundaries.“ - Midori Mitamura Image 1: „Unseen Three Portraits „, 2025, Artist-in-Residence Project ‚Weaving Everyday‘, Contemporary Art Factory, Kyoto, (c) Midori Mitamura Image 2: Portrait (c) Midori Mitamura #kumanonisumu #kumanonisumu2025 #artistinresidenceprogram #midorimitamura #instalationartist #sitespecificart #kumano #japan

We are happy to welcome Chiku Komiya to KUMANONISUMU! 2025 ✨ Chiku Komiya is a composer and media artist, exploring new forms of music in contemporary media environment. His work spans acoustic music, electronic sound, media performance, and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include Let me sing a strange song (Berlin) and SEIRÊNES (Tokyo). He holds BA and MA degrees in Music and Composition from Tokyo University of the Arts. „I create works that reconstruct the forms of music and modes of perception by focusing on the transformation of the body, voice, and language in contemporary media environments. By combining generative media/sound installations with live performance, I seek to open new pathways of expression across the boundaries between music and art. Grounded in the physical and acoustic training of Western classical music, my practice critically reexamines the norms of this tradition while exploring fundamental musical elements such as voice, song, and language.“ - Chiku Komiya 現代のメディア環境において変容する身体・声・言語に焦点を当て、音楽の形式や知覚のあり方を再構築する作品を制作している。生成的なメディア／サウンドインスタレーションとパフォーマンスを組み合わせることで、音楽とアートの境界を横断し、新たな表現の回路を切り拓くことを目指している。 西洋音楽の正統教育に根ざした身体的・音響的訓練を出発点に、その規範に対する批判的視点を養いながら、声や歌、言語といった根源的な音楽要素を再考する実践を続けている。- 小宮知久 Image 1: サウンドインスタレーション《kokokko》内で行った、KOE語による架空の民謡パフォーマンス《Siika-siika》: Video still by Fuka Nagata Performance of imaginary folksong in the KOE language „Siika-siika“, within the sound installation „kokokko“: Video still by Fuka Nagata Image 2: Portrait, photo by Fuka Nagata #kumanonisumu #kumanonisumu2025 #artistinresidenceprogram #chikukomiya #soundartist #performativeart #sitespecificart

We are excited to welcome Sophia Tabatadze to KUMANONISUMU! 2025 ✨ Sophia Tabatadze graduated from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam in 2002 and completed the CuratorLab curatorial program at Konstfack, Stockholm in 2018. In 2007, she represented Georgia at the Venice Biennale and was also part of the Istanbul Biennale. Her work has been  exhibited at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen; Tartu Kunstimuuseum;  Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes; Museum  Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; and Tbilisi History Museum. Tabatadze’s drawings blend imaginary and real worlds, embracing the unpredictability of their outcomes.  “My love for art started with drawing. Over the years I explored installations, performances, and film, often inspired by architecture and the traces people leave behind. But returning to drawing brought back the joy, the flow, and the beautiful uncertainty of not knowing exactly where a line will take me.” - Sophia Tabatadze Image 1: Untitled, ink & felt-tip pen on paper, 29.7 × 42 cm © Sophia Tabatadze Image 2: Portrait © Ana Tabatadze @anatabatadze_studio #kumanonisumu #sophiatabatadze #contemporarydrawing #sitespecificart #artistinresidence #kumano #japan