Mariam Akubardia

Born in Abkhazia, Akubardia and her family were displaced during the war in the early 1990s, later returning to the occupied Gali region where she spent her formative years. Growing up in a destabilised territory – moving between temporary shelters and abandoned properties – profoundly informed her understanding of belonging and impermanence. The artist locates the genesis of her visual language in these early experiences: following her grandmother through war-scarred neighbourhoods, entering empty houses, and encountering bombed structures. This early necessity to comprehend the histories embedded within ruined spaces remains the catalyst for her ongoing inquiry.

Akubardia's figures are inextricably bound to these environments, often appearing absorbed in an interior temporality. Their gestures and relationships to the surrounding architecture suggest that the trauma of war extends far beyond geography, fundamentally altering how individuals inhabit time itself. While her practice is deeply rooted in the specific history of Abkhazia, it fiercely resists reducing political experience to mere autobiography. Through her work, Akubardia articulates a broader, universal condition: how occupation and displacement continue to reshape individual perception and social structures long after the immediate violence of conflict has ceased.