Commissioner: Shalva Khakhanashvili;
Curators: Shalva Khakhanashvili, Nino Metreveli;
Exhibitors: Tatia Darchiashvili, Konstantin Mindadze, Guram Nikoladze, Nestan Mikeladze, Manuchar Okrostsvaridze, Guela Patiachvili, Mamuka Tsetskhladze, Merab Buliskiria, Karim Borjas, Jean-Dominique Ferrucci, Aliska Lahusen, Eve Ramboz, Annette Turrillo, Pedro Morales , Eizo Sakata , Mauro Marcenaro, Silvano Rubino
Venue: Palazzo Querini - Calle Lunga San Barnaba, Dorsoduro 2691
Georgia
Modern Argonauts – Georgian Crossroads
album
description
The Georgian pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2026 launches its Modern Argonauts from a contemporary crossroads of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Drawing on the mytho-historical associations of the Golden Fleece, the project reframes the journey not as a nostalgic return, but as an ongoing voyage of exchange and transformation. Georgia’s position is a “threshold” where ancient myth meets the urgent questions of the present.
The pavilion stages an interstitial space of encounters. Works appear as fragments: walls that fail to divide, screens inviting multiple readings, and sounds without fixed origin. At its heart, the Georgian alphabet – Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, and Mkhedruli – is examined as a palimpsest inscribed with the legacies of the Silk Road. Through cryptographic projections and evocative soundscapes, hidden meanings and cosmological significances are revealed.
Conceived as a vessel – like the Argonauts’ ship – the pavilion functions as a modern museum in motion, evoking the scale and intimacy of a caravanserai. By interweaving folk motifs with modernist abstractions, it maps provisional routes through the global cultural seascape, offering an experience of drift and reorientation against static narratives of national representation.
