In her solo exhibition The First Finger (chapter II), Tolia Astakhishvili (*1974 in Tbilisi, Georgia) transforms the Haus am Waldsee in the course of an expansive installation. In addition to structural interventions, drawings, paintings, text and videos, the exhibition includes new collaborative works with Zurab Astakhishvili, Dylan Peirce and James Richards as well as contributions by Antonin Artaud, Alvin Baltrop, Kirsty Bell, Nat Marcus, Vera Palme, Andreas Rousounelis, Judith Scott, Ser Serpas and Giorgi Zhorzholiani.
At the beginning of The First Finger is the image of a physical borderline experience: a body exposed to extreme cold must set priorities in order to protect itself as a whole. For its survival, it rations its energy and sacrifices piece by piece, finger by finger, its most expendable limbs in order to continue to guarantee the blood flow to the most important organs in the centre. For Astakhishvili, this bodily reduction to a life-sustaining core forms the point of …
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Image above: Tolia Astakhishvili and James Richards, I Remember (Depth of Flattened Cruelty), 2023, film still, video installation, 10 min, Courtesy the artists; Cabinet, London; Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin; LC Queisser, Tbilisi