Connecting people through art 

We are pleased to extend an invitation to the artist's talk by  Tekla Aslanishvili, that will take place at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai on 2nd March at 7pm.

The artist will discuss her practice and research, focusing in the film A State in a State, on display at Jameel Arts Centre from the 1st of March to the 24th of April, which is the result of Aslanishvili winning the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2020, in collaboration with Art Jameel, Dubai/Jeddah; Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; NTU CCA, Singapore and WIELS, Brussels. 

A State in a State (2022) traces the construction, disruption, and fragmentation of railroads in the South Caucasus and Caspian regions. It looks at the ongoing wars and conflicts through the lens of transport infrastructures, observing how railways came to materialize the fragile political borders that have reemerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film revolves around the scenes of delay and waiting that constitute cargo mobility, countering optimistic narratives about the New Silk Road and examining how the iron foundation of connectivity is used as a weapon of exclusion and geopolitical sabotage.
Dotting the same lines, other forms of sabotage are deployed by workers to disrupt the political violence. Looking at historic and current practices of resistance, A State in a State explores the potential of railroads for building a different, infrastructural consciousness and the lasting, transnational, kinship among the people who live and work around them.

Tekla Aslanishvili (b. 1988) is an artist, filmmaker and essayist living and working in Berlin and Tbilisi. Her works emerge at the intersection of infrastructural design, history and geopolitics. Tekla graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2009 and she holds a MFA from the Berlin University of the Arts – the department of Experimental Film and New Media Art. Aslanishvili's films have been screened and exhibited internationally at Tbilisi International Film Festival, Loop Barcelona – Fundació Antoni Tàpies museum, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, PACT Zollverein, Neue Berliner Kunstverein, Baltic Triennial, Tbilisi Architecture Biennial, Videonale 18, Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kunsthalle Münster, EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Transmediale Festival, Berlin.She is a 2018–2019 Digital Earth fellow, the nominee for Ars-Viva Art prize 2021 and the recipient of the Han NefkensFoundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2020.