Nina Sanadze

Concurrent exhibitions in Melbourne demonstrate the scale and emotive impact of Nina Sanadze's sculptural work. Since immigrating to Australia in 1996, she has developed an artistic discourse that explores the symbolic and thematic power underlying the creation of statuary and architecture for public places. Across the centuries and today, the ideas and inequalities such structures can perpetuate have the ability to polarise.

The past several years have seen numerous protests and acts of vandalism directed against public monuments deemed to be offensive, particularly during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 sparked by the death of George Floyd (1973-2020) in the United States. In Australia, the defacement of statues and sites associated with navigator Captain James Cook (1728-1779) and colonial Governor Lachlan Macquarie (1762-1824) continues. Some in the museum sector argue a policy of “retain and explain,” or “dialogical memorialisation,” should be adopted towards problematic works, whereby contemporary objections are contextualised and articulated.

Nina Sanadze, who was born in Georgia during the Soviet era, is well acquainted with such controversies. She concedes that provocative historical works and sites can still serve a purpose, “they not only encapsulate and remind us of a painful past, but also serve as a warning for the future.” The public monuments in Sanadze’s childhood home of Tbilisi still resonate within her practice, just as memories of her life under the communist regime inform her ability to locate deeply personal narratives within a wider context. “I view every challenge or experience in my life as material to transform into artistic expression, allowing me to analyse and understand it on a deeper level,” she maintains. “I’ve always experienced the political and social situation during my upbringing as an acute condition that deeply affected and emotionally informed me.”

Audience engagement is an important facet of Sanadze’s output, particularly in terms of performative acts within outdoor or shared spaces. “My work originates from the infrastructure of public space before transitioning to the gallery, so I derive pleasure from reintroducing it to public settings in a playful and thought-provoking manner.” Sanadze is also the founding artistic director of Collective Polyphone Festival, and a member of the art collective ShewD. “My background in designing theatre and stage costumes has a discernible influence on my work, which often possesses a theatrical or cinematographic quality. There’s a deliberate embrace of the ‘fakeness’ of materials and an intention for observation, contemplation, and scene-setting rather than aiming for absolute realism or permanence,” she explains.

Sanadze’s multi-disciplinary practice, including sculpture, photography, and film, has developed over time as her confidence grew to pursue more challenging ideas, on a greater scale. “Since I don’t confine myself to familiar mediums, but instead opt for the most suitable material to express the idea and form, I often find myself needing to acquire new skills, or work with individuals who can instruct me in the use of a particular medium. It has been a lifelong journey of continuous skill acquisition that never ceases,” she remarks.

Despite Sanadze’s technical proficiency, these installations are not merely “sculptures about statues.” She subverts the original function and visual language of these often-bombastic memorials and uses them as a premise to address more disturbing issues still prevalent within society.

“Surprisingly, my work isn’t about monuments; I’m not particularly interested in their problems or solutions. To me, monuments are simply theatre sets, backdrops for the unfolding action which is of real interest to me. Monuments obscure the horrific violence, like screens, allowing only a reflection of what’s going on. They function as special mnemonic devices that encapsulate these narratives. Each monument holds a unique history and context, warranting careful consideration.”

The smaller exhibition Hana and Child at the Jewish Museum of Australia reveals painful aspects of Sanadze’s family history against the backdrop of the continuing war in Ukraine. The works are a response to the searing image taken in Ivanhorod in 1942 showing a member of the Einsatzgruppen (SS paramilitary death squads) aiming his rifle at a woman. She averts her face from immanent death, and desperately attempts to use her body to shield a small child. The evidence was intercepted by the Polish resistance and preserved in the archive of photographer Jerzy Tomaszewski (1924-2016). Sanadze’s great-grandparents, Hana and Joseph, with three of their four children, were murdered in similar circumstances.

The artist’s visceral reaction was to equate the grainy picture, and the six victims in the un-cropped frame, with Hana and one of her children. Sanadze has completed hundreds of sculptures based on the poignant final embrace captured in the image: in steel, stoneware, and a life-size Living Sculpture, 2023-ongoing. Using unfired clay with armature, its ephemeral nature is expressive of the process of creation and destruction common to both life and art. “Despite the boundless stories and emotions behind each sculpture, there was a realisation of the inherent limitations in conveying the depth of human experience through sculpture alone,” she admits. “The photograph that served as a powerful anchor behind every sculpture felt elusive, as if its essence was impossible to fully capture, no matter how many times I attempted to sculpt it.”

These works provide the conceptual linkage to the survey Nina Sanadze at the National Gallery of Victoria, where 261 of the smaller and more abstract Hana and Child figurines are grouped on six stepped plinths in the concluding space. “When I assembled all the sculptures together in the gallery, the expanse of the installation, the subtle shimmering colours and their humble scale felt fitting, creating an atmosphere that resonated.”

Family history also informs several works with a connection to the former “People’s Artist of Georgia,” Valentin Topuridze (1907-1980). The Sanadze family were his neighbours; her father Eduard (1938-1987), who would become a renowned musician, occasionally modelled for Topuridze as a youth. The Topuridze family preserved this archive after his studio was dismantled and many of his public monuments were destroyed after 1989. Sanadze acquired this collection of remnants, which forms Apotheosis, 2021, in the midst of which stands the likeness of Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), and busts of writers Count Akaki Tsereteli (1840-1915) and Alexander Griboyedov (1795-1829). Sanadze reflects on her childhood, and the father who died when she was only ten, within the rubble of Topuridze’s once pre-eminent career.
“Observing Stalin in the installation prompts me to consider how his legacy has become unexpectedly relevant here in Australia and the West. It’s striking that most other broken figures in the pile are of cultural icons, as they were among the first victims of totalitarianism. Ideological fanaticism poses a significant danger to democracy and tolerance.”

As the viewer contemplates what seems like a mausoleum for redundant monuments and the dictatorships that produced them, the artist stresses that the same repugnant views and destructive imperatives have been renewed before our eyes. “I wish I could have presented a more uplifting show, but it wasn’t the right time. As always, my work closely reflects our world and at present, in times of war and distress, it is evident in the way the show is staged,” Sanadze continues. “From room to room, it’s a journey from light to the darkest depths of human bleakness and horror . . . in its portrayal of the human experience in the aftermath of violence, upheavals, revolutions, conquest, wars, ideological madness, and genocide.”

This article was originally published in Artist Profile, issue 67 

EXHIBITION
Nina Sanadze
12 April – 4 August 2024
National Gallery of Victoria: The Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne