AIR GALERIA ARSENAŁ: Saba Khechoshvili

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE GALERIA ARSENAŁ:

Saba Khechoshvili

05.09–18.10.2026

In September and October 2026, the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok hosts an artist from Georgia Saba Khechoshvili. His stay is part of the ARTIST IN RESIDENCE GALERIA ARSENAŁ programme.

Movement, displacement, change, repetition, and search constantly shape Khechoshvili’s architectural and emotional landscape. His practice revolves around two spaces: his apartment and his father’s workshop. These spaces became subjects of observation due to contrasting experiences.

His study of the apartment stems from a sense of alienation, shaped by the Georgian context, where personal space carries a different meaning. The apartment transformed daily through family intervention and the accumulation of objects, disrupting any sense of belonging.

Khechoshvili explores how physical and psychological patterns from long-term habitation transfer between spaces. He often replicate structures from his apartment elsewhere, reflecting his struggle with organization and the constant rearrangement of objects.

Industrial material plays a crucial role in Saba Khechoshvili’s work. Father’s workshop, originally a Soviet-era light industry institute producing textiles, later transitioned to plastic production. Over time it adapted to economic shifts, producing school supplies, containers, and even functioning as a bakery.

As production changed, remnants of past materials accumulated, turning the workshop into a hybrid of active space and archive. Its identity remains tied to post-Soviet economic transformations, continuing to evolve with political shifts.

In both spaces, objects reshape their environment, shifting function and meaning. Their relentless accumulation dominates the space, resisting order and existing independently of human intervention. From this arises Khechoshvili’s interest in the specific relationship with spaces: how the experiences accumulated here, whether obstructive or disturbing, can be used for the benefit of his practice, translated into a new space, and made universally understandable in such a form that the viewer also becomes engaged in this process.

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