Tolia Astakhishvili is a Georgian visual artist born in Tbilisi in 1974, living and working between Tbilisi and Berlin. Moving across installation, sculpture, drawing, painting, sound and moving image, she treats architecture as a mutable structure rather than a neutral container. Found materials, construction elements, images, text and sound become layered environments in which memory, use and imagined narratives remain unsettled. Her works often invite collaborators into the process, expanding authorship and allowing each exhibition to evolve as an inhabited, collective space.
In 2026, Astakhishvili presents Figure of the Child at mumok in Vienna, her first solo museum exhibition, on view from 20 June to 1 November. Developed in dialogue with mumok’s collection, external loans and numerous artistic collaborators, the project transforms the museum through large-scale, site-responsive installations. The exhibition approaches childhood as a condition of both creative autonomy and dependence, extending the encounter with art toward movement and touch. It follows recent institutional presentations at SculptureCenter in New York, Haus am Waldsee in Berlin and Bonner Kunstverein, while a new artist’s book devoted to Figure of the Child was published in August 2026. Astakhishvili’s practice is distinguished by its ability to make physical space register psychological tension, shared histories and the possibility of continual change.