Artist Retreat
with Uta Bekaia
Workshop
1 – 4 November 2024
Have you ever felt a longing to connect with a deeper part of yourself — the divine being within? This being, both familiar and mysterious, embodies the brightest and darkest aspects of who we are. It represents our courage and our fears, our light and our shadow. The workshop, called The True Form with Uta Bekaia, aims to explore and express this inner being.
This creature — be it an alter ego, imaginary friend, fear, aspiration, or guiding angel — helps us reconnect with our true soul, our original self. Through art, artists delve into this duality and bridge the inner divide. By creating masks, they transform themselves, drawing on ancient traditions where humans have used such mediums to communicate with the divine. This process allows individuals to reach a pure, unfiltered version of themselves.
The final exhibition emerges from the mask-making workshop, where participants engage in creating masks as vessels for their mental and energetic projections — manifestations of the inner self through symbolic form. Rooted in ancient traditions, the mask transcends mere artistry, functioning as a ritualistic medium that humanity has employed for millennia to bridge the seen and unseen, the personal and the collective, the material and the spiritual.
This creature — be it an alter ego, imaginary friend, fear, aspiration, or guiding angel — helps us reconnect with our true soul, our original self. Through art, artists delve into this duality and bridge the inner divide. By creating masks, they transform themselves, drawing on ancient traditions where humans have used such mediums to communicate with the divine. This process allows individuals to reach a pure, unfiltered version of themselves.
The final exhibition emerges from the mask-making workshop, where participants engage in creating masks as vessels for their mental and energetic projections — manifestations of the inner self through symbolic form. Rooted in ancient traditions, the mask transcends mere artistry, functioning as a ritualistic medium that humanity has employed for millennia to bridge the seen and unseen, the personal and the collective, the material and the spiritual.
Uta Bekaia (b. 1974) is a contemporary artist living and working in New York and Tbilisi. He studied Industrial Design at Tbilisi Mtsire Academy and made his artistic debut at AMA (Avant-Garde Fashion Assembly) with a sculptural performance.
Bekaia engages with multiple artistic mediums, creating wearable sculptures, performances, and videos where the boundaries between disciplines blur, and cultural references are synthesized into his own personalized vision. With a background in fashion and costume design at the start of his career, Bekaia transformed these mediums into his primary means of exploring the human body and fully immersing himself in performance art.
Inspired by ancient mythology, fairy tales, Italian Baroque, and Georgian Dada, Bekaia uses his exuberant, sculptural costumes to reinvent and re-stage long-lost, undocumented rituals. Believing in the genetic transferability of communal memory, he strives to reconnect with ancient knowledge, infusing it with his own experiences and imbuing it with new meaning.
Bekaia engages with multiple artistic mediums, creating wearable sculptures, performances, and videos where the boundaries between disciplines blur, and cultural references are synthesized into his own personalized vision. With a background in fashion and costume design at the start of his career, Bekaia transformed these mediums into his primary means of exploring the human body and fully immersing himself in performance art.
Inspired by ancient mythology, fairy tales, Italian Baroque, and Georgian Dada, Bekaia uses his exuberant, sculptural costumes to reinvent and re-stage long-lost, undocumented rituals. Believing in the genetic transferability of communal memory, he strives to reconnect with ancient knowledge, infusing it with his own experiences and imbuing it with new meaning.
