Tamara Kvesitadze: Kinetic artist
We follow the story of ’Sigh’, a large-scale installation being created by Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze and bound for China
Tamara Kvesitadze is a Georgian artist best known for her visually striking kinetic sculpture, ‘Man and Woman’ which is positioned on the edge of the Black Sea in Batumi, Georgia and features two 26 feet tall figures made from steel discs. Every evening ‘Man and Woman’ begin to move together, before merging and eventually passing through one another.
Tamara works using a technique called kinetic sculpture - sculptures that contain movement or depend on motion - and her creations often combine elaborate moving mechanisms with evocative imagery.
Her work ‘Sigh’ – bound for a Buddhist resort in Wuxi in China - is a reflection on both the country’s traditional philosophy and the progressive thinking of modern China. The idea is that the installation will feature a giant figure of a man which slowly rises out of the water to reach a height of nearly 60 feet, before splitting into eight leaf-like pieces that slowly submerge back into the water and form a lotus flower. The grand size of the piece is intended to encompass the beginning and the end of human experience, and to chime with Buddhist philosophy of surpassing it.
Natalia Golysheva was lucky enough to witness the birth of ‘Sigh’ at the end of 2018, by joining Tamara as she worked on the project across several months – taking her from London to Georgia – to find the perfect combination of modernity and tradition.
Presented and Produced by Natalia Golysheva for the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ World Service
