Artist Residencies in Georgia
A curated guide to residency programs, production spaces, and research-based initiatives supporting contemporary art in Georgia.
The residency landscape in Georgia has grown largely outside formal state structures, shaped instead by artist-run initiatives, repurposed industrial buildings, and networks that emerged in the years after independence. Much of this activity concentrates in Tbilisi, where former Soviet-era factories, printing houses, and warehouses have been converted into studio complexes and production spaces that host both local and visiting artists. Rather than a single dominant institution setting the terms, contemporary art residencies in Georgia tend to operate as small, flexible programs attached to galleries, independent spaces, or self-organized collectives, where the line between living, working, and exhibiting often dissolves into a continuous studio environment. This decentralized, frequently improvised model gives residency programs in Georgia a particular texture: production stays closely tied to the physical and historical fabric of the buildings themselves, and artists working in residence often engage directly with questions of memory, transition, and the rapidly changing urban environment.
International exchange plays an outsized role, in part because residencies offer one of the most direct routes for Georgian artists to connect with practices beyond the Caucasus while drawing foreign artists, curators, and researchers into local contexts. Research-based residencies here tend to emphasize fieldwork, archival inquiry, and site-specific projects that reach past the capital toward regional towns and the Black Sea coast around Batumi, where landscape, border histories, and post-industrial sites supply abundant material. Open studios, temporary exhibitions, and informal public programs usually accompany these stays, keeping residency work porous to wider audiences. For most artists the appeal lies less in elaborate facilities than in time, proximity, and a community willing to test unfinished ideas in public — conditions that have gradually made the country a more considered stop within international artist residency programs.
Selected Artist Residencies in Georgia
A curated selection of residency programs supporting contemporary art production, research, and international exchange.
GeoAIR
Running a residency since 2010, GeoAIR is a self-directed program in Tbilisi that hosts artists, curators, and researchers using the city as a base for examining urban space, memory, and social engagement across the South Caucasus. It connects residents to local networks and institutions and maintains the Archidrome contemporary art archive alongside public talks and discussions.
As one of Georgia's longest-running residencies, GeoAIR anchors research-driven and curatorial practice within the Caucasus, linking local cultural producers to international networks and archival work.
Ria Keburia Foundation
Founded in 2018 by patron Ria Keburia, the foundation runs a residency in rural Kachreti, Kakheti, alongside its Tbilisi gallery. It supports production, research, and archiving for local, regional, and international artists, structuring its program across several residency categories with mentorship, workshops, and exhibitions. Exchange agreements with partner residencies abroad extend its role in connecting Georgian practice to wider networks.
It is among the more structured private initiatives in Georgia, combining a rural production base with international exchange and a sustained focus on emerging South Caucasus artists.
AqTushetii
Based in the remote highland village of Omalo in Tusheti, AqTushetii is a self-organized residency and festival roughly 187 km from Tbilisi. It brings together visual and sound artists alongside practitioners from other disciplines to work, research, and exchange knowledge in an isolated mountain setting. Residents present talks or workshops, and selected work is shown in affiliated spaces in Tbilisi.
Its remote location distinguishes Georgia's residency map, pushing site-specific and research-based work beyond the capital while maintaining links to Tbilisi's contemporary art venues.
Untitled Tbilisi
Founded in 2019, untitled tbilisi is an independent organization working at the intersection of queer and feminist politics, contemporary art, and social engagement. Its residency prioritizes research-based practice across performance, video, sound, photography, and text, offering time and context rather than production pressure. Curatorial and organizational support is available when residents choose to share outcomes through exhibitions, screenings, or performances.
It extends Georgia's contemporary art ecosystem toward queer, feminist, and decolonial positions, giving research-driven and socially engaged practices a rare dedicated platform in the South Caucasus.
Art Villa Garikula
Founded in 2000 by Karaman Kutateladze in a 19th-century villa in the Kaspi region, Art Villa Garikula is often described as the first rural-based contemporary art residency in Georgia. It functions as an art commune and educational platform hosting visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians, and long anchored the annual Fest I Nova contemporary art festival dedicated to the Zdanevich brothers, structuring exchange between local and international practitioners.
Pioneering rural contemporary art infrastructure in Georgia, the villa decentralized residency activity away from Tbilisi and built sustained ties between Georgian artistic memory and international practice.
This is a curated selection of residency programs. Explore the broader contemporary art ecosystem of Georgia.
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