"Abstract Face" Artwork

Gela Mikava (b. 1995, Zugdidi, Georgia) is a Georgian artist based in Tbilisi, working in painting and mixed media. His practice centres on salvaged Soviet-era cotton fabric known as biazi, which he seeks out and recovers from the ceilings of old homes.

Residual glue, attached paper, water stains and wear shape the development of his paintings. These traces affect how paint penetrates the fabric, how layers adhere and how images emerge. Mikava works through painting, stitching, paper collage, covering and seepage, bringing deliberate decisions into contact with the unpredictable behaviour of the materials.

His relationship with biazi began in childhood. In the home his parents bought during their displacement, he watched rainwater stain the fabric-and-paper ceiling and searched the changing marks for shapes. The pleasure of discovery coexisted with shame about the condition of the house. This experience continues to inform his attention to surfaces and their transformation.

Across distinct series, faces, bodies, animals, flowers and text become visible, fragmented or partially obscured. Each series develops its own concerns, while the relationship between an image and its material surface remains a recurring investigation.

For Mikava, a painting begins before his first mark. The fabric carries the physical effects of earlier actions and conditions; his intervention continues its transformation, bringing different periods of domestic life and artistic work together on one surface.

He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture from Georgian Technical University.