RAUM

Guram Shavdia, born in 1988 in Tbilisi, Georgia attended Iakob Nikoladze Art School between 2003-2007. He continued his studies at Dusseldorf Academy of Fine Arts under the guidance of Marcus Lupertz and Andreas Schulze, graduating with distinction (Meisterschüler) in 2014, and receiving his MA diploma (Akademiebrief).

While living in Germany, he held 3 solo and numerous group exhibitions. Guram’s main focuses are painting and graphics working on paper and canvas using mixed techniques. His main sources of inspiration are historical references which he represents in the form of archetypes and cultural symbols that often combine elements of figuration and abstraction.

As the esteemed Georgian visual artist, Gia Edzgveradze put it, "Guram Shavdia's art is intricately woven with the essence of reconceptualizing historical visual and cultural signs, with the noble purpose of establishing the profound openness of the absurd."

Since 2020 has been living and working in Tbilisi. In 2023 Guram Shavdia and Mariam Odishelidze founded Raum a combined work and exhibition space based in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Born in 1988 Mariam Odishelidze Graduated from Art Academy Düsseldorf, under the guidance of Prof. Andreas Schulze in 2015. She works through mixed media expressing her art via paintings, textiles, ceramics and graphics.

Her art projects her experience of moving from Tbilisi to Düsselforf and back to her homeland, as well as her recent motherhood, Mariam Odishelidze explores the moment of transition from one state of being to another, the transition between cultural contexts, from life to death, from the material being to abstraction, from presence to absence, from profaneness to sacredness. Her figurative paintings address the emotional mentality of humans as universal beings, independent of religion, race or cultural background.

Since 2020 Mariam Odishelidze has lived and worked in Tbilisi, Georgia, where in 2023, together with Guram Shavdia she founded a work and art space Raum.