Project Art Beat: the portable Tbilisi-based gallery taking contemporary art across the Caucasus

Tbilisi-based Project Art Beat has taken on the ambitious task of pushing contemporary art from the Caucasus to a new level.

Established in 2014 by Natia Bukia, Salome Vakhania and Natia Chkhartishvili, it defies the classic format of four white gallery walls. The founders’ main goal is to promote the work of Georgian artists to the international community, mainly by means of an online gallery.

Local communities, however, are also important to them: a shipping container transformed into a portable gallery delivers cutting-edge exhibitions to the doorsteps of Georgians outside of Tbilisi, who wouldn’t otherwise get to see contemporary art installations as often as the inhabitants of the capital.

Project Art Beat is determined to include Georgia in the global cultural conversation, not only with a presence at global art fairs, but also by discovering projects that talk to a broad range of audiences, such as Brian Griffin’s celebrated 1989 image-only editorial for Comme des Garçons, which they exhibited in Tbilisi in 2016.

Text: Anastasiia Fedorova