Batumi Photo Days 2018
By Mariam Chanishvili
Wednesday, September 5
Batumi Photo Days took place in Western Georgia, seaside city Batumi from August 31 to September 2.
The festival is held from 2014, which is known as Odessa/Batumi Photo Days.
Within the frame of the Batumi Photo Days Festival, four exhibitions and three-night screenings took place.
Three-night sessions featured “Georgia and South Caucasus,” “Eastern Europe” and “Asia, Africa, and Near East” took place.
An exhibition by Koka Ramishvili called AEOLUS (Sculpture as an Event) was also presented.
The event was hosted by the Contemporary Art Space Batumi, co-hosted by Odesa// Batumi Photo Days Festival.
Koka Ramishvili (1956 in Tbilisi, GE), who lives and works in Geneva, got full attention thanks to his participation in the Venice Biennial of 2009.
The central exhibition Se@ Experience was opened on September 1, which included 26 participants from 14 countries. The works are exhibited at the chairs in Batumi Boulevard (from the alphabet to the "Ali and Nino" sculpture).
The event was supported by Georgian National Museum, Project Contemporary Art Gallery, Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport of Adjara, Contemporary Art Space Batumi and Creative Georgia.
International Festival Odesa // Batumi Photo Days was founded in 2015 as a reflection on socio-political events in Ukraine. Despite the economic difficulties, the festival took place annually in two cities – in Odesa, Ukraine (April) and in Batumi, Georgia (September).
From 2018, festivals have begun their own history separately in two countries.
Batumi Photo Day format is focused on creating an artistic platform that helps improve professional skills.
Organizers aim to achieve an inspirational process and future collaboration with participants that could be developed to an artistic, or documentary photo projects and later be implemented, within the contemporary Art Space Batumi, as well as, create entirely new experiments and cross-sectoral collaboration.
