Georgian art festival in Brussels brings together East and West

"The Avant-Garde in Georgia" at Bozar is one of the main highlights of this autumn's Europalia arts festival in Brussels.

Transcript

00:00 The avant-garde in Georgia at Bazaar is one of the main highlights

00:05 of this autumn's Europalia Arts Festival in Brussels.

00:09 The exhibition centres on the first three decades of the 20th century

00:13 when the art scene flourished in the South Caucasus country.

00:17 It's a period that includes a three-year interlude of independence

00:21 between the fall of the Russian Empire

00:23 and the invasion of the Soviet regime.

00:26 It was very important for Georgia and avant-garde

00:29 not only to study and to build the institutions, to research art,

00:34 but also to use it as a method in their very avant-garde practices.

00:41 So it makes the Georgian avant-garde also very exceptional

00:45 with this connection between the past and the future and the tradition also.

00:50 The mixture of Eastern and Western elements is also evident,

00:53 with various styles present in the work.

00:58 I'm here in Brussels with a guest who spoke with Levan Chogosvili,

01:01 a Georgian artist whose work features heavily in the exhibition.

01:05 This exhibition is also very good because it shows that our art

01:12 was very close with European art and so on.

01:16 Today, many Georgian artists, young artists, of course,

01:21 go somewhere in the West and study there and then return.

01:27 Visitors can also enjoy a programme of concerts, cinema, dance and theatre

01:31 at various cultural venues in Belgium until mid-January 2024.

01:36 Polyphony, meaning multiple voices,

01:38 is just one of the core themes of the festival,

01:41 both in music and as an opportunity for diverse communities

01:44 to express their views.

01:46 The second theme is remembrance.

01:48 Remembrance is about questioning the past

01:53 and also to reflect about the future.

01:56 How do you deal with certain pasts?

01:58 How do you deal with the Soviet regime, which still has an impact today?

02:03 So it's also about conflicts from the past,

02:08 also more recent conflicts, like conflicts still going on today

02:12 in Georgia, in South East Asia and in Abkhazia,

02:16 and also, of course, the Ukrainian war, which has an impact in Georgia.

02:21 An important part of the programme is the outcome of creative partnerships

02:25 between Georgians and artists of other nationalities,

02:28 with the commissioning of specific works for the festival.

02:31 [Music plays]