“The process goes through this in-between space. I don’t want to complicate it.” Georgian artist Andro Wekua shares a glimpse into his practice, which ranges between sculpture, video and paintings.
Growing up in Georgia, Andro Wekua never planned to become an artist. But he does remember drawing a lot in school and taking an interest in art. “What I know is that I’m a lot in my head thinking about stuff. And I have a particular feeling to the time and the past,” he says and continues: “I don’t only work with memories. Memories are a part of it. Some are emotional; some are just visual. Some take more space, some take less.”
Around the time when he was 13 years old, Andro Wekua had to flee Georgia. When we look at a sculpture like ‘Get out of my room’ (2006), we see a young boy, also around 13 years old, dressed as a schoolboy, slumped in a chair. The boy seems stuck in time and space. “I was almost this age when I had to leave the city where I grew up,” Wekua says. “I have a lot of fantasies and memories about it,” explaining further: “It becomes almost a science fiction.” In the time following his move from Georgia, the young Andro Wekua had a lot of dreams about the city he grew up. Always trying to escape unnoticed. This inspired the series of works ‘Pink Wave Hunters’ (2010-11) in which Andro Wekua has recreated buildings from his childhood city from memory: “I tried to reconstruct the buildings,” he says and continues: “The façade, which I really knew, I tried to make as precise as possible.”
The video work ‘All is Fair in Dreams and War’ (2018) shows a chaotic collection of clips, including a burning palm tree. “It has some kind of part in my reality, this title. Kind of a big part, actually.” Having experienced the war, where he also lost his father, who was a political activist, Wekua has seen violence up close. “I think this before and after is too mixed for me. I cannot keep it clear,” he explains further: “Violence was a part of my life, too. It’s not something that I’m cultivating in my work, but if it’s necessary and I have to take it to the edge, I’ll do it. I do the same thing if it has something to do with beauty.”
Andro Wekua (b. 1977) is a Georgian artist based in Zürich, Switzerland, and Berlin, Germany. Wekua was born in Sokhumi, where he witnessed an ethnic conflict in Abkhazia in the 1990s. He works in various media, including collage, painting, sculpture, installation and film. Wekua has built a cosmos in which he stages fragmented personal and political memories through assemblage-like visual strategies. Solo exhibitions include TANK Shanghai (2022), Benaki Museum, Athens (2014), Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Kunsthalle Friedericianum, Kassel (both 2011), Wiels, Brussels, Museion Bolzano (both 2010), Museum Bojmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2007), and Kunst Museum Winterthur (2006). Selected group exhibitions include Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2023), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019), Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles, Albertina Museum, Vienna (both 2018), Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2016), the High-Line Art, New York (2015), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014), Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva (2013), New Museum, New York, 54th Venice Biennale (both 2011), Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich (2008), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006), and 4th Berlin Biennale, Berlin (2004).
Andro Wekua was interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen at his studio in Berlin in March 2023.
Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard
Edited and produced by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2023
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, C.L. Davids Fond og Samling, and Fritz Hansen.
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