Zinaïda Tchelidze

Sophie Whettnall’s choice : Zinaïda Tchelidze

Zinaïda Tchelidze (Georgia, 1982) lives and works in Brussels. She received her M.A. in Visual Arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Art of Brussels in 2008. Her variegated practice might be understood through acts of engagement, which have taken different shapes throughout her body of work: from an almost symbiotic collaboration with other artists for her pieces Pink Cloud and Golden Boy, to a deep involvement in her research subject for her installation A Flat Library. Tchelidze’s art-making process consists in thoughtfully selecting from different materials—whether ready-made items such as a book collection, or objects of her own fabrication—to build up an artistic comment on a specific subject matter to which she initially committed. Instead of following the traditional artist path of mastering a medium to aesthetically depict a subject, Tchelidze begins by engaging with a topic or a way of working, from which choices of materials and mediums are made only later.