Zinaïda Tchelidze

Zinaïda Tchelidze – Tête-à-tête, 2024

• Vaartdijk, border Vilvoorde – Brussels

In Buda, with its industrial character, it would be rather unusual to stumble upon a planned seating area. Perhaps it is the lack of captivating views or simply the neighborhood’s tendency not to lend itself to rest and leisure, which benches often offer. Crossed by the border between Brussels and Flanders, Buda’s locus not only delineates an administrative divide but also embodies the social and linguistic complexities inherent in collaboration across such divides.

Zinaïda Tchelidze’s installation Tête-à-tête emerges from a liminal zone. Composed of the structures found in the Brussels city depot in Buda, remnants of Brussels’ urban planning and infrastructure, this reconfigured object refers to the emotional and historical connotations that persist in transitional spaces. It contains both the potential for an intimate encounter and the discomfort thereof.

Zinaïda Tchelidze plays with an outsider’s gaze, often inclined to aestheticize or romanticize elements associated with decay. Subtly touching upon the revitalization processes and their actual impact on the local social structures, Tchelidze’s work is an anti-form of what it originated from, or perhaps an anti-monument to desires, ambitions, and political projections placed on the bordering zones.

About

Zinaïda Tchelidze (b.1982, Georgia) is an artist and educator, working mainly with sculpture and installation. She obtained an MA in printmaking and art in public space from the Royal Academy of Fine Art of Brussels. Tchelidze is interested in performative aspects of exchange and sharing. She engages with recurring gestures, intertwines them throughout installations to explore spatial constraints, notions of collectiveness and isolation. As part of her collaborative practice she works with craftspeople, scientists, and artists to test the boundaries between creativity and (not)knowing. Inspired by the traditional Georgian feast (supra), she has been organising the “Rubeli” performative table questioning the phenomenon of hospitality and exchange, and their different forms in relation to time and social conditioning.Tchelidze lives and works in Brussels. She has exhibited at various venues such as Art Antwerp fair for the representation of the FW-B (2022); SB34-Clovis, Brussels (2022); Het Paviljoen, Ghent (2021); Morpho, Antwerp Art Weekend (2021); DuflonRacz, Brussels (2019, 2020); Vanderborght Building, Brussels (2019); CENTRALE for contemporary art, Brussels (2019); World Trade Center, Brussels (2018), among others.