Georgia
Khinkali Juice:
Georgian National Anthem

Georgian National Anthem, video, 1:34 min., 2006
 

After the Rose Revolution in 2003, the national anthem of Georgia became as popular as John Lennon's hymn to peace, "Imagine" – children were taught it at school, it could be heard in public parks and it was performed live at weddings. As there was no funding for contemporary art, Nadia Tsulukidze and Sophia Tabatadze formed the performance group Khinkali Juice and took their first shot at being entrepreneurs themselves by producing this video of the Georgian National Anthem. In a short film comprising three Individual shots, we see the group performing – very much in a loose sense of the word – on the "Europe Square" in Tbilisi.  The second shot reveals the square in question in Tbilisi’s Town centre as a really inhospitable, forbidding place. In the final shot we see a sign in the background pointing to "President George W. Bush Street".
Both artists collaborated under this name and produced site-specific performances in the wake of the Rose Revolution. The group dealt with, reflected upon and subjected difficult issues to a specific artistic process, whereby humour was deployed as a critical tool throughout. The compound name "Khinkali Juice" stands for a hybrid of western and Georgian values within Georgian transitional culture. English has appropriated the cultural space, which was hitherto occupied by Russian during the days of the Soviet Union. Khinkali is a Georgian dumpling filled with meat, and it should be eaten with one’s hands without losing any of the juice. If a foreigner can demonstrate mastery of this technique, he is afforded a special welcome into Georgian traditional circles.

Khinkali Juice (Sophia Tabatadze  /  Nadia Tsulukidze)
*1977 / *1976 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Sofia Tabatadze lives, works in Berlin, Germany; Nadia Tsulukidze lives, and works in Amsterdam, Netherlands and in Tbilisi, Georgia.
 
The name “Khinkali Juice” represents the hybrid of western and Georgian values in Georgian culture of transition. The English language has appropriated the cultural space, which was occupied by the Russian language during the Soviet Union. Khinkali is a Georgian dumpling originally filled with meat, and it should be eaten with hands without loosing the juice. If a foreigner can demonstrate this technique he gets a special welcoming into Georgian traditional circles.

Sophia Tabatadze is a visual artist living and working in Berlin, Germany. Tabatadze was born in 1977 in Tbilisi, Georgia. During 1997–2002, she studied and completed Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Tabatadze has shown her work internationally. She represented Georgia at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and participated in Istanbul Biennale in the same year. She participated in museum shows at Fine Arts Museum, Nantes, France; Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Tbilisi History Museum, Georgia. Her personal shows took place at galleries, “Kunstvereins” and art-fairs in Germany, the Netherlands, China.
Her research topic often concerns architecture; she draws portraits of humans by observing architecture and conditions they live in. She works with different media - her carrier started with making drawings, after that she added more dimensions to her work and was busy making installations and performances, and her latest project was a documentary film.

Nadia Tsulukidze was born in Georgia in 1976. After completing the Music College in Georgia, she studied dance in Germany. After returning to Georgia in 2004, as a freelance artist, she collaborated with visual artists and co-founded a performance group called Khikali Juice. She took part in international projects and exhibitions in Turkey, Armenia, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, France and Germany. In 2010, she finished Master of Theatre studies at DasArts in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. With her graduation documentary theatre piece ‘Ready for Love or Seven Fragments of Identity,’ she was nominated for the Neu/Now Festival in 2011 and in 2012, she presented the work in Georgia and England within the framework of the European project “Carmen”. She worked as an artistic assistant with Edit Kaldor (“The Work”) and Jochen Stechmann (“The Critical Piece”), Lado Darakhvelidze (“Museum TV Station”). In 2013, she made a performance “Me and Stalin” produced by Traum-A, Boris vzw and Belluard Bollwerk International, co-produced by Kaaitheater Brussels, Frascati Amsterdam, BIT Theatergarasijen and Schlachthaus Theater Bern. In 2015, with the support of Women’s Fund in Georgia, in Tbilisi Nadia made a performance “Happy 8th of March”. She is currently based in Amsterdam (NL) and Tbilisi (GE).