Nina Kintsurashvili

Verse II, 2024, oil on linen, 66 7/8 x 66 7/8 inches (170 x 170 cm)

Invoking the tradition of fresco painting in her native Tbilisi, Nina Kintsurashvili creates work that hover between historical artifact and novel abstraction. Drawing on fragmented Byzantine iconography and public mosaics, Kitsurashvili “repaints” the gaping holes that have been lost to time and history.

After Georgia gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the artist’s father Lasha Kintsurashvili, a renowned fresco painter, restorer, and calligrapher, began traveling to remote heritage sites that, for decades, were neglected by the former government. With the goal of rebuilding a lost tradition of Georgian iconographic painting, he endeavored to study and restore the disappearing medieval murals. Inspired in part by his pursuit, Kintsurashvili’s artistic practice observes how this imagery adapts through time and shifts with changing ideologies, hoping to “grasp some sort of totality of the way things are” and to “do so through painting.” By engaging with missing visual information, her practice highlights how memory is shaped by absence as much as by presence. 

Kintsurashvili’s work reflects a dialogue between material and conceptual realms, where historical references and contemporary abstraction converge. Her compositions subtly evoke recognizable genres, such as landscapes or still lifes, allowing familiar forms to emerge. Cultural imagery is freed from its ideological framework, and let to experience visual and semantic shifts that reveal hidden painterly structures. The resulting pictorial spaces are inhabited by abstracted forms, inviting the viewer to consider the dialogue between representation, imagination and the possibilities of painterly form.

Kintsurashvili (b. 1992, Tbilisi, Georgia) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. An interdisciplinary artist and painter, she earned her BFA in painting from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts in 2014 and her MFA in Sculpture & Intermedia from The University of Iowa in 2014 as a Fulbright Foreign Student. Kintsurashvili’s works have been exhibited at Polina Berlin Gallery, New York (2025); Konsthall C, Stockholm, Sweden (2025); Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, Georgia(2023); Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography, Mestia, Georgia (2021); Public Space One, Iowa City, Iowa (2020); Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, Austria (2024); LC Queisser, Tbilisi, Georgia (2023, 2022); Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York, (2020); and Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, Belgium (2025), among others. She will hold a solo exhibition at Polina Berlin Gallery in May 2026.

  • Born

    Tbilisi, Georgia, 1992 
    Lives and works in Tbilisi, GE

    Education

    • 2020 | MFA, Intermedia & Sculpture, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

    • 2014 | BFA, Painting, Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Tbilisi, GE

    One-Person Exhibitions

    • 2026 (forthcoming) Polina Berlin Gallery, New York, NY (May 2026)

    • 2025 Udabno (with Lasha Kintsurashvili), Konsthall C, Stockholm, SE (4/25-6/8)
      I Met A Traveller, Polina Berlin Gallery, New York, NY (3/19-4/26)

    • 2023 Mute Things, Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, GE (10/27-12/12)

    • 2021 Limen (with Tamo Jugeli), Svaneti Museum of History and Ethnography, Mestia, GE  (6/5-7/27)

    • 2020 Unattended Act, Public Space One (PS1), Iowa City, IA (4/27-5/12)

    Selected Group Exhibitions

    • 2025 Field for Prey (with Charles Degeyter and Ana Gzirishvili), Tatjana Pieters, Ghent, BE (3/2-4/13)

    • 2024 Expelled Grounds, Nina Kintsurashvili, Ana Gzirishvili, Salome Dumbadze at Kunstraum Lakeside, Klagenfurt, Austria (11/27/24-1/9/25)
      Field for Prey (with Charles Degeyter and Ana Gzirishvili), Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, GE (9/14/24-2/1/25)
      SIXROOMFLAT, Studio Gypsandconcrete, Tbilisi, GE 
      My Sister Named..., L’atlas Gallery, Paris, FR, in collaboration with Gallery Artbeat, Tbilisi, GE (3/22-5/24)

    • 2023 Never The Right Time, COMMUNE Gallery, Vienna, AT (11/3-12/15)
      Painting After Wall Painting, E.A. Shared Space, Tbilisi, GR (9/24-10/29)
      Tsinamdzgvrishvili 49 / Mazniashvili 10,  LC Queisser Tbilisi, GE (5/19-6/07)

    • 2022 An Ocean Standing, LC Queisser, Tbilisi, GE (12/9/22-2/17/23FIVEROOMFLAT, Studio Gypsandconcrete, Tbilisi, GE (5/26-7/14)
      Supta Khelebi: Ten Collections of Works on Paper by Georgian artists (curated by Nino Sakandelidze), Stamba, Tbilisi, GE

    • 2021 Every Woman Biennial (curated by Eddy Grattan-Bellew and Ruby Streek), London, UK (6/12-7/9)
      Mazes, Microcosms, Mitosis (curated by Danni O’Brian), The Ekru Project, Kansas City, KS (5/7-5/30)

    • 2020 Mirror Eye, Ortega y Gasset Projects, New York, NY (1/3-1/5)

    Awards, Fellowships and Residencies

    • 2024 Residency, Research Station, Konsthall C, Stockholm, SE
      Residency, (Dis)Solutions – Decolonial Encounters, Latvian Center of Contemporary Arts x Goethe-Institut

    • 2020 Residency, ArtVilla Garikula, Garikula, GE
      Award, Forbes Georgia 30 under 30

    • 2019 Award, Edmund S Muskie Scholarship Award, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

    • 2017 Fulbright Foreign Student Program, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

    • 2013 Award, Ministry of Culture and Monument Protection of Georgia Research Award, Florence, IT

  • Family Style | Nina Kintsurashvili | Trace of Time: Political turmoil and cultural heritage converge in Nina Kintsurashvili’s debut New York exhibition, in which the Georgian artist presents deeply referential paintings

Images

Exhibitions

Nina Kintsurashvili in her Tbilisi studio, 2024