Lia Ukleba

Lia Ukleba
Kutaisi, Georgia
Feminist Painter | Visual Provocateur | Post-Soviet Storyteller

Available for Representation and International Exhibition
Saatchi Art Featured Artist

Artist Statement

“My work is a scalpel. I paint not to decorate walls, but to dissect silence — the silence of women, tradition, and power.”
— Lia Ukleba

Biography
Lia Ukleba (b. 1974) is one of the most radical and necessary voices to emerge from Georgia’s contemporary art scene in the past decade. Based in Kutaisi — a city steeped in myth and post-Soviet paradox — Ukleba began painting in 2011 as an act of survival and defiance.

Untrained by conventional standards and uninhibited by them, Ukleba’s visual language is visceral, autobiographical, and deliberately discomforting. Her canvases are charged with feminist critique, social resistance, and the often censored emotional realities of women in patriarchal cultures.

Practice
Working primarily in acrylic and mixed media, Ukleba’s style merges neo-expressionist intensity with folk surrealism. She explores themes of:

Gender inequality and institutional violence

Motherhood and its distortions

Sexual repression, memory, and religious guilt

Georgia
2013 – Ilia State University, Tbilisi
Displayed the now-iconic painting "The Virgin with a Toy Pistol." The exhibition was censored mid-run, sparking nationwide debate on artistic freedom, gender, and religion.

2015 – Kutaisi Independent Gallery
A solo exhibition exploring themes of domestic trauma, repression, and womanhood through surreal and symbolic figuration.

2021 – Public Mural, National Library Wall, Kutaisi
Participated in a public graffiti installation commemorating Soviet repression, organized by IDFI and funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

2022 – “Tell Your Daughters” — Zurab Tsereteli MoMA, Tbilisi

Part of UNFPA Georgia’s national touring exhibition. Ukleba contributed powerful mixed-media portraits addressing bodily autonomy and female resistance.

International
2019 – Artisterium XII: “On the Road”
Group exhibition at the David Kakabadze Gallery with artists from South Korea, France, Israel, Turkey, Chile, and more. Though hosted in Georgia, the show was internationally curated and distributed via global art media.

2020s–present – Imago Mundi Global Art Collection
Selected for inclusion in Luciano Benetton’s Imago Mundi project — an international platform for contem...