Uta Bekaia is a Georgian born (1974) multimedia artist currently residing and working in New York and Tbilisi. He had studied Industrial Design at Tbilisi Mtsire Academy. He debuted as an artist at AMA (Avant-Guard Fashion Assembly) with a sculptural performance. He creates performances and installations inhabited with wearable sculptures, exploring his historical cultural background, genetical codes and cycles of the universe. Resident artist at ART OMI, New York.
With Levan Mindiashvili he had collaborated as Bekaia + Mindiashvili duo on several projects, among them are “Night Intervention” at State Silk Museum, Tbilisi (Goergia) and “Unintended Archeology” at The Lodge Gallery, NYC. Among his exhibitions are Kiev 2nd Biennial, ArtIsterium 2015, Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project, The Vasquez Building, Brooklyn; His current performance pieces are “41o” Art Villa Garikula; Tbilisoba Festival; “Vestiphobia”, Ideal Glass, New York; “Fua Sia Tata Sia”, The Movement Theater, “Berikaoba” for Tbilisi; Tbilisi City Parade.
Uta Bekaia engages multiple artistic mediums, creating wearable sculptures, performances, and videos, where the borders between the disciplines are blurred, and the cultural references are synthesized in his own, personalized vision. With the background in fashion and costume making in the beginning of his career, Bekaia transformed these mediums into the main means, to approach human body and fully emerge into performances. Inspired by ancient mythology, fairy tales, Italian Baroque, and Georgian Dada, Bekaia with his exuberant, sculptural costumes, reinvents and re-stages long lost, never-before-documented rituals. Believing in genetical transferability of communal memory, Bekaia attempts to re-connect with the ancient knowledge and impregnate it with his own experiences and new meaning.
