Untitled 2022

Alevtyna Kakhidze made this untitled drawing in 2022, and I’m taken by its mix of personal and political narratives played out in ink, watercolour, and a digital interface. Looking at the piece, I imagine Alevtyna hunched over a table, urgently sketching, words and images spilling out of her onto the page, like a diary entry. The layered compositions, the artist’s personal anxieties and observations mixed in with references to current events, and the more playful inclusions, like a cat named Penelopa, give it the feel of a stream-of-consciousness drawing. The materiality of the work feels immediate: it is, first and foremost, a drawing. But because it includes text taken from social media, it also reminds me of the way many of us see and experience the world now, as mediated by digital technology. The rawness of the line and the handwritten text remind me of artists like Tracey Emin or David Shrigley, who also use personal experience as a way to talk about the bigger issues. Artists are always in dialogue, finding new ways to explore old themes, speaking to each other across time.