Irinka Talakhadze
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Irinka Talakhadze lives and works in Tbilisi, and art has been part of her life since childhood, through her father. Most of her paintings start from an image in her head that she sketches out first. Her subjects are children in costumes and masks, fictional characters she invents. "The costumes aren't disguises," she says, "they're emotional devices," and she paints them in earthy browns, ochres and dusty blues. Her solo show The Fairground looked at the people behind the performance, once it's over.
Q: Art was part of your life from the start because of your father. Is there a specific memory of him that still shows up in your work?
A: I don't think there's one specific memory that appears directly in my work. Instead, I feel closest to him during the process of painting. My figures often exist between becoming and being, between stillness and movement, and perhaps that reflects how memory works too, not as something we see directly, but as something that quietly shapes everything we create.
Q: Can you walk us through your creative process? How does a new painting usually begin?
A: Most of my paintings begin with a feeling or an image that stays in my mind. I usually spend time planning the composition before I start painting, making sketches and thinking about the relationships between the figures, costumes, and space. I rarely work from photographs. Instead, I rely mostly on imagination, allowing the painting to develop naturally on the canvas.
Q: Where do your staged, costumed children come from?
A: The children in my paintings aren't portraits of specific people. They are fictional characters that exist somewhere between childhood and adulthood, play and ceremony, innocence and performance. The costumes aren't disguises, they're emotional devices. They create distance from reality while allowing the figures to express something more universal. I'm interested in moments when someone seems to be rehearsing a role or quietly becoming someone else. Although the figures often appear calm, there is always a subtle tension beneath the surface.
Recently my work has begun shifting toward adult figures, but they still carry that same sense of vulnerability, ambiguity, and transformation.
Q: Your colors carry a Soviet-era, Eastern European feel. Is that memory, or something you picked up along the way?
A: I don't consciously try to create a Soviet-era atmosphere. It's something that exists somewhere in my visual memory. Stories from my grandparents, old family photographs, everyday objects, and the places I grew up around all became part of me. Those impressions quietly return in my paintings without me planning them. I only notice them afterward.
Q: Earlier this year you had your solo show The Fairground. Looking back, how did that body of work come together?
A: The idea for The Fairground came from my curiosity about what exists behind places that are meant to represent joy and entertainment. I became interested in what happens behind the scenes, who these people are once the performance is over, what stories they carry, and what emotions exist beneath the smiling faces. Rather than painting the spectacle itself, I wanted to focus on quieter, more intimate moments that reveal vulnerability and uncertainty. For me, the fairground became a metaphor for the roles we all play and the private selves that remain hidden behind them.
Q: What are you working on now, and what can we expect next?
A: I'm currently working on a new body of paintings that continues my interest in figures, costume, and quiet psychological moments, while moving toward a more distilled visual language. I'm trying to leave more space for ambiguity and for the viewer's own interpretation. Later this year I'll present new works in Barcelona, Belgium, New York and Los Angeles.
