KVARELI.- The Kvareli Foundation for Contemporary Art is a new cultural institution located in Kvareli, in the Kakheti region of eastern Georgia. Founded by Georgian Collector and Businessman Jemal Inaishvili, it opens to the public on 31 October 2026, and marks the beginning of a long-term institutional commitment to the research, preservation, exhibition and interpretation of Georgian contemporary art.

The first of its kind in Georgia, the Kvareli Foundation for Contemporary Art’s building is designed by the Tbilisi-based architectural practice Midamo, by architects Giorgi Chkonia and Dato Danelia. It was conceived as a multifunctional cultural campus set within the landscape of the Caucasus foothills, and brings together exhibition spaces, a public programme of talks and performances, an on-site hotel, and a fully accessible rooftop that forms an integral part of its public and artistic programme. It is designed as a platform for research, education and cultural exchange — a place where artists, curators, scholars and audiences meet, and where Georgian contemporary art is placed in dialogue with international contemporary art discourse.

Titled Georgian Contemporary Art: Origins and Continuities, curated by Nino Sulkhanishvili, the institution’s inaugural exhibition traces the development of Georgian contemporary art from the 1960s to the present, examining the shifting artistic languages, intellectual positions and modes of expression that have shaped its trajectory over more than six decades. Rather than proposing a comprehensive or strictly chronological history, the exhibition approaches this period through a series of transformations: from formal experimentation to conceptual and ideological opposition, from collective artistic movements to radical individual positions, and from the rupture of the Soviet collapse to the increasingly plural field of contemporary practice. The exhibition follows this history from the assertion of artistic autonomy within the Soviet cultural environment of the 1960s and 1970s, through the dynamic collective circles of the 1980s such as the 10th Floor, Archivarius and the Marjanishvili circle, to the irony and grotesque of the turbulent 1990s and the plural, internationally connected field of the twenty-first century. Rather than presenting a linear succession of styles, it proposes a history built through continuities, ruptures and recurring questions — asking how artistic languages are transmitted, rejected, rediscovered and transformed over time. As the Foundation's inaugural exhibition, it establishes this history not as a closed canon, but as an evolving field of research that the institution intends to continue examining, complicating and expanding.





The Kvareli Foundation for Contemporary Art aims to create an institution where artistic practices are sustained over time, regional cultural production is strengthened, and contemporary art serves as a space for knowledge, critical reflection, and international exchange.

Following the inaugural exhibition, the Foundation's programme will continue with a series of monographic presentations dedicated to key figures of Georgian contemporary art:

• Elene Chantladze — Solo Exhibition, curated by Otto Bonnen

• Tamara K.E. — The Retrospective, curated by Gean Moreno

• Maia Naveriani — Solo Exhibition, curated by Elene Abashidze