Reach Art Visual

Biographies

Emma Zar-Khutsi

Emma Zarafishvili-Murzina, also known as Emma Zar-Khutsi (1940–2012), was born in the city of Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, and later lived in Tomsk. In the 1950s, she moved to Tbilisi, where she became part of a circle of Georgian artists. She worked as a model at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. Emma’s first husband was the Soviet book graphic artist Dimitri Zarafishvili, while her second husband was the painter Jemal Khutsishvili. For this reason, Emma Murzina is also referred to by the surnames Zarafishvili and Khutsishvili.

Emma Zar-Khutsi began painting in 1967 at the Senezh Creative House during a period of rest and artistic retreat. In 1969, her first solo exhibition was held at the House of Art Workers of Georgia. Her works are preserved in private collections across Georgia, Russia, and Germany. She was also the author of a collection of Russian-language poetry.

Emma Zar-Khutsi’s artistic practice, including both painting and graphic works, developed from the 1960s until her death. Stylistically, her work is associated with naïve art, primitivism, and outsider art.

Gregor Danelian

Gregor Danelian was born in 1950 in Tbilisi. In 1964, he graduated from the Tbilisi Art School, where he studied under Shota and Margarita Metreveli, whose own teachers included Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikov, Eugene Lanceray, and Iosif Charlemagne.

In 1972, Danelian participated in the Republican Exhibition. In 1973, he graduated from the Yerevan State Institute of Fine Arts and Theatre. He initially studied industrial graphic design before transferring to the department of carpet and tapestry under Hakob Keshishian. Danelian held numerous solo exhibitions of his carpets and tapestries in both Tbilisi and Yerevan. From the 1970s onward, he was actively engaged in artistic processes and exhibitions. In 1988, a solo exhibition of his work was held at the House of Artists in Tbilisi.

Danelian’s artistic style evolved significantly across different decades. Between 1965 and 1975, his work explored expressionism, pop art (particularly collage), and monumentalism. During the 1970s and 1980s, he experimented with luchism, cubism, and metaphysical painting. From the 1980s until his death, he created mystical, esoteric, and meditative paintings, investigating themes such as irrationalism, the vibration of the soul, and light as an absolute. In these works, one can observe echoes of the Fantastic Realism associated with the Vienna School.

R.A.V.  - Reach Art Visual presentation at TAF 2026 brings together emerging and mid-career artists whose practices explore abstract and experimental thinking through diverse methodologies and media, including graphics, collage, and painting.

The presentation highlights individual perception as a unique mode of expression, where each artist develops a distinct visual language and artistic approach.

Presented artists: Mari Babaevi, NOBU, Giorgi Shengelia, Kristine Tusiashvili.

Zanāneh (Women’s Work / Made by Women) - Mari Babaevi

This series of four drawings, developed as part of the artist’s diploma work, centers on the braid as a symbol of strength, identity, and collective memory. Through layering and repetition, the artist reflects on the silent labor of women, where the braid, much like a woven carpet, becomes a carrier of stories beyond words. The works evoke a fragile shelter shaped by ancestral presence, held together through intertwined forms even as the structure gradually dissolves.

About the artist 

Mari Babaevi is a Georgian visual artist and designer of Azerbaijani descent. She graduated from the Faculty of Visual Arts, Architecture and Design at the Free University of Tbilisi and will continue her studies in Fashion Design at Polimoda, Florence from October 2025. Her multidisciplinary practice spans textiles, garments, and mixed media, reflecting on identity, memory, womanhood, and cultural duality rooted in her Georgian-Azerbaijani background. She has exhibited locally and internationally, with her solo show Sugar Cubes at Patara Gallery, and group shows including Untold Narratives at Tbilisi Art Fair, Too Many Dinner Parties at Fabrika, and a group exhibition at the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum. Her works have also been featured in VA[A]DS Book Design Shows and the Ad Black Sea International Festival. Her Diploma work was shown at AFA Art foundation Anagi. Recently, she has participated in group show “Cartography of Monochrome Feelings” initiated by unarchived semiotics and organized at AFA. Her works was successfully presented at Hessinki International Auction about Georgian Modern and Contemporary Art. 

Handmade collage - Eye of a Needle - Kristine Tusiashvili

Kristine Tusiashvili’s handmade collage Eye of a Needle reflects on the persistent structures of power, money, and fame that continue to shape contemporary society. Combining a colorful, symbolic, and referential visual language with echoes of Dadaist collage practices, the work reinterprets fragmentation and layered imagery through a contemporary perspective. Through an observational and introspective approach, the collage questions humanity’s ongoing desire for control and achievement, while revealing the fragile tension between ambition, illusion, and personal identity.

About artist

Kristine Tusiashvili (b. 1982, Tbilisi, Georgia) is a contemporary media artist working across video installation, photography, collage and performance. Her multidisciplinary practice explores themes of identity, memory, diversity, and cultural heritage through staged and conceptual visual narratives. Combining performative elements with digital manipulation, Tusiashvili constructs layered atmospheres that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, often examining psychological and emotional states within contemporary society.

She studied Art Theory and History at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts between 2000 and 2006 before continuing her artistic education in Germany. In 2008–2009, she attended guest studies in sculpture with Prof. Dr. Thomas Grünfeld at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf, and later completed a Master of Arts degree in Photography and Media at the University of Fine Arts (HBK) in Essen in 2015. Tusiashvili has presented numerous solo exhibitions and performances internationally, including Poetics of Perception (Tbilisi, 2024), aufblühen (BBK Kunstforum, Düsseldorf, 2024), Diverse Thinking (Ria Keburia Foundation, 2023), Something that is inside me (Novo Gallery, Tbilisi, 2022), and the ongoing performance series Walk for Freedom presented in Düsseldorf between 2019–2025. Her works have also been featured in group exhibitions and festivals across Georgia, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Israel, including presentations at ART Düsseldorf, the Goethe Institute Georgia, NRW Forum Düsseldorf, Wiesbadener Fototage, Contemporary Art Space Batumi, and group show Self-portrait in Front of the Mirror, at  the Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery in Tbilisi.

Experimental painting series “Untitled” - Giorgi Shengelia