VENICE.- In Medea: Fragments of Memory, Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze unveils a new body of work conceived specifically for the historic spaces of Palazzo Bragadin. Known internationally for her kinetic and monumental sculptures - and for having represented Georgia twice at the Venice Biennale - Kvesitadze continues her exploration of movement, transformation, and the fragility of human experience. The exhibition is supported by Kornfeld Gallery Berlin, Atelier Visconti and David Bezhuashvili Education Foundation.
Rooted in both mythology and cultural memory, the exhibition draws from the figure of Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis - an ancient kingdom associated with present-day Georgia. In Kvesitadze’s vision, Medea transcends narrative to become a condition: a state of exile, fragmentation, and emotional displacement that resonates across time and geography. Venice itself becomes a conceptual anchor for the project. The artist describes the city as “one of the most vulnerable incarnations of architectural memory: a city built on water, existing between preservation and disappearance.” This tension materializes in a central installation: a square model city composed of elementary plywood forms. Slowly rising and dissolving, the structure evokes the unstable nature of memory - appearing, vanishing, and reconfiguring in an endless cycle. Large suspended panels of red and blue paper flank the space, their surfaces marked by fissures, traces, and stratifications. These works function as visual sediments of time, what remains after erosion, history, and transformation. Within this layered environment, Medea emerges not as a figure, but as an echo: a presence carried across worlds, altered yet persistent.
At the threshold of the exhibition, the viewer encounters Reptile, a kinetic sculpture extending from floor to ceiling. An ancient, pre-civilizational form, the reptile becomes a metaphor for transformation and survival. Composed of fragmented female feet, the red Reptile suggests a body that resists wholeness-layered, incomplete, and in constant mutation. Red, here, signifies not only blood, but intensity, origin, and accumulated experience. Further into the space, Whirling Woman, a fiberglass kinetic sculpture, turns slowly in perpetual motion. Neither fixed nor resolved, the figure embodies the condition of exile-caught between past and future, belonging and estrangement. Like memory itself, it remains unstable, resisting a singular direction or identity.
In this immersive environment, Medea is reimagined as a living tension rather than a mythological character. Her journey - marked by love, rupture, and displacement - becomes a reflection on the impossibility of continuity. She exists as trace, as residue, as something that persists even in fragmentation. Sound plays a crucial role in shaping this experience. Soundwalk Collective, founded by Stephan Crasneanscki and joined by Simone Merli, offers the sonic counterpart of the exhibition with their composition “Medea”. Drawing from recordings of radio waves, voices, and environmental sounds gathered around the Black Sea, the work unfolds as an acoustic journey, immersive, fragmented, and deeply evocative. It mirrors the exhibition’s core themes: displacement, resonance, and the persistence of memory.
Medea, Fragments of Memory invites viewers into a sensory landscape where meaning is not explained but experienced. Moving through shifting forms, layered materials, and sonic atmospheres, the audience encounters memory as a living process—fluid, unstable, and profoundly human.
Tamara Kvesitadze (born 1968, Tbilisi) is a Georgian artist known for her kinetic sculptures and large-scale installations, where movement, engineering, and emotional resonance converge. She studied Architecture at the Tbilisi Technical University, lives and works in Tbilisi. Her work has been featured in numerous solo show, including KORNFELD Galerie Berlin (2020; 2025), D Contemporary in London (2016), Atelier Visconti in Paris (2013), and the Georgian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). She has also participated in major group exhibitions at institutions such as Saatchi Gallery (London), Sotheby’s (London), Leo Gallery Shanghai x Chun Art Museum (2024), and the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). Among her most iconic public artworks are the kinetic sculptures Man and Woman (Batumi, Georgia, 2010; Vietnam, 2018; New Zealand, 2024), Sigh (Wuxi, China, 2019), and Hours (Tbilisi, 2012). Her works are held in significant public and private collections, including The Tia Collection (USA), The Chinshea Museum (China), the City of Tbilisi, the City of Batumi, and the Deji Art Museum (Nanjing).
Soundwalk Collective is a sonic arts platform founded by Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, known for site-specific projects that merge conceptual research, field recording, and experimental composition. The collective collaborates with leading figures such as Patti Smith, late Jean-Luc Godard, Nan Goldin, Sasha Waltz, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, creating works that explore memory, time, and transformation. Their practice spans installations, performances, and film scores, including the original soundtrack for All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by Laura Poitras, winner of the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. In 2024 they premiered Correspondences, a new performance work. Soundwalk Collective has presented and performed internationally at institutions including BAM, Centre Pompidou, CTM Festival, documenta, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manifesta, New Museum, Reethaus, TPMM Tbilisi, and Volksbühne Berlin.
