Vajiko Chachkhiani

Vajiko Chachkhiani is a Georgian artist whose work mostly involves film, sculpture, photography and visual installations. Currently he lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Tbilisi, Georgia. Chachkhiani's work has been shown at the Venice Biennale.

Early life

Vajiko Chachkhiani was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He studied Mathematics and Informatics at the Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, before turning to Fine Arts, which he studied at Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany and Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Career

At the Venice Biennale in 2017, he showcased a Georgian log cabin, that he received from the mining town of Chiatura. The cabin was filled with typical furniture and ordinary objects. Eventually, the rain started getting inside the work, causing moss to grow and creating an inversion between inside and outside. The title "A Living Dog in the Midst of Dead Lions" probably relates to the exhibition's location in Venice, whose symbol is the lion.
At the Bonn Art and Exhibition Hall of the [Federal Republic of Germany] in 2018, Chachkhiani showed the disturbing story of a family in the short-film "Heavy Metal Honey". The film starts with a quiet family meeting and turns unreal when the mother starts shooting the family members. In the ending, everyone is sitting unharmed at the table.

Solo exhibitions

2014 – Both,, Siegen, Germany
2017 – Living Dog Among Dead Lions, Georgian Pavillon, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2018 – Winter Which Was Not There, Turku Art Museum, Finland
2018 – Heavy Metal Honey, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn
2018 – Flies bite, Its going to rain, Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan
2019 – Film, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany
2022 - The New Year, Pori Art Museum, Finland

Collections

, Clermont-Ferrand, France
Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
, Siegen, Germany

Awards

2013 – DAAD-award, Bonn, Germany
2014 – 7th Rubens Promotional Award, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, Germany
2015 – Arbeitsstipendium, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn, Germany
2017 – Future Generation Art Prize 2017, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, Ukraine
2019 – One of 4 recipients of a Villa Aurora fellowship for visual arts, Los Angeles, USA