Art Taaalkssss: Ana Jikia

And if one of them pressed me against their heart was the title of Ana Jikia’s recent exhibition, presented at Espace Big Bang in Sierre. On that occasion, the artist meditated on love: beautiful love, warm love, and unreciprocated love. She created a sound piece and a series of paper figures that expressed her fascination with angels and the ways in which they are imagined in their physicality and relationship to the divine and to love. Made in depleted paper waste, the angels appeared in a limbo-like, confused, and heartbroken state: not flying in the air or suspended in the sky but caught within office paper waste. She reimagined the exhibition space as a station where the angels were forever trapped, accompanied by a “sound of life” soundtrack that was played back at them from outside to inside, in a continuous loop.  
 
During this Art Taaalkssss session, Jikia will share and comment on the sound piece that was presented at the recent exhibition in Sierre, reflecting at her practice that, just like the angels, exist across various material and immaterial forms.  
 
Ana Jikia, born in Tbilisi, is a Basel-based artist who works with sound, drawing, and paper sculptures. After a decade-long training as a classical pianist, Jikia studied at the Centre of Contemporary Art Tbilisi (CCA) and did a guest student year at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Jürgen Drescher. In 2022, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. 
 
Active in Switzerland and internationally, she is one of the co-founders of the Georgian multimedia collective Blue Yogurt. She has presented her work at Fondation Beyeler, Kunsthaus Glarus, CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel, CACY Centre of Contemporary Art Yverdon, and Kunsthalle Basel.