The walls of Eteri’s childhood home are covered with her paintings. A part of the works created from the years of youth to the present, which you will find on every wall of the house, tells the story of the artist’s professional path, personal experiences and searches. Even just the paintings are enough to get to know the artist, who expresses a clear position on social and political processes, turns personal stories into universal emotional experiences, and is constantly changing, developing, in search of something new.
She speaks calmly, like her father, whom she remembers with special love and says that he was an exemplary person for her. She can’t stand swearing and chaos – she inherited this from her father, and her mother instilled her with a love of learning. She travels a lot. She says that traveling has become a way of life and it helps in personal and creative development. Getting to know new cultures, accepting such traditions or norms, with which she is in agreement, is preferable for her. She can’t stand traditions that people follow without thinking.
She left Georgia at the age of 23 and has been returning periodically since then. Now she has returned after 5 years abroad and, as she says, she wants to be here for now. She does not know how long she will stay, but returning to her home and seeing her friends is so important that periodically she cannot think about anything else, leaves everything and returns.
From the article, you will get to know Eter Chkadua better, an artist who tells us about her life, professional searches and visions.
Soviet Blockade and the Example of Parents
Eter Chkadua with her father, Ambako Chkadua / photo used from Eter Chkadua’s archive
Her father, Ambako Chkadua, was a linguist, and her mother, Guliko Kvaratskhelia, was brought up in a family of teachers and worked in education before she had children. They had two children, Eter and Gotcha, whose age difference was only one year, so they brought them to school together. Eter remembers that studying and working were always the main priority in her family, and her children were taught the same. At the same time, they did not limit their freedom and their opinions were constantly heard. She especially remembers her father’s character, which became an example for her.
“Gocha and I were raised like twins. There was a year difference between us and we were admitted to school together, we sat at the same desk. My father was an amazing guy, he was quiet, he spoke quietly, I never heard him raise his voice or swear. It was an example of how he could control his emotions. I don’t like that Georgians are angry all the time. I remember from my mother that she couldn’t stand gossip and paid a lot of attention to make us study. She taught Gotcha and me to draw.”
She tells us that she was drawing from a young age, and the people around her did not spare their praise. She was studying at school when her works were displayed on the walls of the school and she was seen by Ucha Japaridze, an artist already at that time. She advised Eter’s parents that their daughter should continue his studies at the Art Academy. She was preparing to enter the art academy with private teachers, Tamaz Khutsishvili and Tina Matsaberidze. At the age of 16, she applied for modeling and a year later she continued her studies in the direction of painting.
She says that she is lucky in her friends and teachers – she remembers laughing with her classmates, happy days and lecturers’ efforts to give students freedom.
“The teachers tried not to have anything to do with Soviet social realism, we had to paint in an impressionist style with quick strokes of the brush. They wanted us to be in no way associated with the Russian Academy. In addition to this, the family also accustomed us to freedom”, recalls Eter and tells how, at the age of 19, when her father was able to travel to Poland from the Soviet Union for the first time for 2 weeks, she tore down the walls of the house. She wanted to completely change the interior, to create an environment different from other Soviet houses.
“He returned to the house, opened the door and found broken walls and dust. I immediately told him what I was going to do and he agreed to everything. Soviet apartments were all alike, I wanted to break that. Once, after finishing the renovation, there was a knock on the door, my father opened it, and several men with stern faces from one of the bodies of the Soviet government entered. It turned out that they saw a balcony built on the facade of the building from the street and came to find out the matter. They asked, what is happening here? Father’s face showed nervousness. As soon as they entered, their faces lit up, they liked the changed interior of the apartment very much. And my father proudly told them that it was my idea to change the interior. The men shook hands with their father and left the house with a changed mood. At that moment, my father’s support and their reaction increased my confidence even more.”
The first true love in Eter’s life appeared in the period when she realized that she could no longer live here – in Soviet Georgia – because she strongly felt the confinement and the fact that she would not be able to talk openly about these feelings.
I knew that I couldn’t go anywhere from the Soviet Union, I couldn’t leave, which worried me, but you couldn’t say much that you didn’t want to live in the Soviet Union. Back then, everyone was quietly talking that someone’s uncle or father could be a KGB agent. Sometimes I think it’s good that I spent my childhood in the Soviet Union and got the experience of living in this system, and then I had to live in another reality.
She says that at the age of 21, she met her future husband, Kevin Tuite, an American linguist who left his profession as a biochemist and came to Georgia to study languages. Kevin saw the Georgian alphabet for the first time at the University of Chicago and was so interested that he decided to change his profession, that’s how he ended up in Georgia. At first, he had arrived for 6 months and was introduced to Eter’s father, who was interested in Georgian languages. He often visited their family and Eter and Kevin fell in love.
Kevin, who came to study the Georgian language, returned and came again in 2 years, after which they got married soon after. At that time, the story of a Georgian woman marrying an American was considered so sensational that they even published an article in the Soviet newspaper “Communist”, “how an American man kidnapped a Georgian bride”.
Shortly after her marriage, in 1988, Eter went to America with her husband. As she recalls, leaving the country was accompanied by fear that they would not let her cross the border.
“We had to fly from Moscow. I was afraid that maybe they wouldn’t let me go. I could not take anything with me. We left my mother’s ring, my paintings, everything in Tbilisi and left. There was one international hotel in Moscow only for foreigners, where Soviet citizens were not allowed. Even though I was with my husband, I was still not allowed to enter. Due to such details, we were afraid that we might not even cross the border. It was like fate that I was able to leave when I knew I could not continue living here. However, when you are in love, everything seems beautiful to you.”
Artist from the Country of Stalin and Matsoni
She says that it was love that made it easier for her to start living in a completely new country from the Soviet Union. As she recalls, this was helped by the fact that when she met her husband’s family members, she discovered that “they were interesting people with different values, as if the diversity of America was included in this one family”.
However, most of the Americans she talked to knew nothing about the existence of Georgia. Sometimes the only way to present the motherland was to mention Stalin. Also, some Americans had only heard about Matsoni from Georgia.
In 1977, the American audience saw an advertisement for Danone company yogurt, which tells about Georgia, in particular, Svaneti, and mentions Matsoni as the secret of the locals' longevity. The mentioned marketing campaign of Danone increased the sale of their yogurt by 120%.
Eter tells us that she was surprised when she attended the defense of her husband’s thesis at the University of Chicago on verb conjugation in the Georgian language and saw how attentively and interested the attendees listened. The year after his thesis defense, Kevin Tuite translated Georgian folk poems into English.
The lack of information about Georgia prompted her to tell about his homeland with pictures.
I kept thinking that I needed to show such details in the paintings in order to convey information about Georgia to foreigners. I wanted the viewer to feel the smell and taste of the Georgian food I was painting. I wanted my expression to speak to the viewer. At that time, minimalism, conceptual art, abstraction and installation were in vogue in America and the West, and figurative paintings were not popular in artistic circles. Everyone advised me that if I wanted to be successful, I should follow the current trend, but I never followed fashion.”
The reactions of foreign visitors to her paintings made her realize that she was able to establish a connection with them through her works – “questions arose for people who did not know anything about the existence of Georgia and its geopolitical situation. Most people thought that Georgia was a part of Russia, they didn’t even know that we have a unique Georgian language and script.”
Although Eter did not follow the trends of the art of the time, her first exhibition in Chicago was well received by the American audience and press. Her early works, including the diploma painting “Hunters”, which was brought to America by her father, were met with approval. We are told that the diploma painting, which she could not take away, because in the Soviet years it was not even possible to take one’s own painting outside the borders, as the Soviet Union began to collapse, was rolled up by his father and brought in Chicago.
“Hunters” / eterichkadua.com
Having moved to America at the age of 23, she first met people of different cultures, races, ethnicities, sexual and gender identities, with whom she became friends and had the experience of living together with them.
“In my opinion, not only an artist, any person should get to know people with different cultures and identities. In my opinion, it is wrong for us, in Georgia, to worship traditions, some of which are so long ago that they no longer have anything to do with today. Why should I follow it? Why can’t we take what we like from different cultures and make it our new value?!”
According to her, many centuries ago, men invented religions and family hierarchy, women were defined as obligations to take care of children or do household chores – due to the patriarchal system, women had little opportunity to show their abilities.
“I remember friends and relatives from Georgia kept reminding me that I should give birth to a child. However, while living in America, I realized that I wanted creativity and freedom more than raising children and family life. There were no dance and music clubs and bars in the Soviet Union. Living in Chicago, I discovered nightlife for the first time at the age of 24—I painted all day and went to bars and clubs in the evenings to dance and listen to music. After the Soviet Union, this freedom was very important for me”.
“I Have to Feel an Emotion with My Whole Being to Paint It”
Vakho Kareli / Aprili Media
She tells us: I was never pragmatic, I painted according to where my emotion took me, whatever mood I was in, and if I couldn’t feel the emotion with all my being, I wouldn’t be able to sit down and devote months to painting. She paints all the time – before she begins to give the final shape to the canvas, she makes at least a few sketches with a pencil until she finds the exact composition.
“Expression is especially important. I want the character in my painting to make a connection with the viewer. I don’t want the viewer to rush past my painting. I want the details of the painting to convey the message of the work”.
According to her, there are paintings that fit the wall, the interior and are pleasant to look at, but this is not important for her – she prefers a piece of art that tells about the time and environment of its creation or makes the viewer think, offers him a different point of view.
“I have often heard the assessment of my paintings as “very strong”. In my opinion, there are works of art that you might not want to see every day because their subject matter and composition reflect a difficult political or personal situation, but such works stay in art history longer. I have always been interested in depicting my feelings in relation to time and environment. I think artists have the power to talk about things that are usually not or cannot be talked about, because this topic is considered taboo, it goes against the cultural traditions, the existing agenda. In my opinion, art in free countries has a significant power to promote the development of human mind, political and social progress”.
In the early years, her technical side was compared to Flemish art, she was also associated with Frida Kahlo due to the use of self-portrait elements in her paintings, and her sensibility was called “magical feminism”, “hallucinatory realism” and so on. She herself has nothing against these assessments, however, she also points out that naming names is the work of art experts.
When the viewer sees the paintings – “The Bride of Akhmeta”, “Alaverdi” or “Treacherous Wife”, they will immediately feel that this is a comment on the patriarchal perceptions in Georgia, where women play the roles that are mainly played by men in traditional societies, which is reflected in the ethereal paintings of women’s courageous expression or body. Nudity is added — another distortion of the patriarchal notion of the role of women. She herself tells us that the messages she has, what she thinks, are subconsciously reflected in the painting.
“Perhaps, free self-expression on the part of a woman is not acceptable for Georgian “macho” men, but I never had a fear of it, because I did not have to fight in my family, and perhaps my courage comes from this.”
After leaving Georgia, she managed to come once in a few years. In Georgia, one tragic story was replaced by another – it was April 9, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the civil war, the occupation of Abkhazia by Russia, during which many people died in the conflict. She heard these news from her family members. She remembered her childhood days in Abkhazia and wanted others to know about the threat posed by the Russian Empire to Georgia. In addition, these were the news that caused special pain, she felt it with her whole body, therefore, a large place is devoted to the theme of the Russian-Georgian conflict in his works.
“Otobaia” / eterichkadua.com
“My grandmother, Eteri Sotkilava, was born in the village of Otobaia in Gali region. My grandmother’s sisters, Tamar and Tatiana Sotkilava, lived in Sukhumi, whom we used to visit during the summer holidays. In 1992, when the war started in Abkhazia, the Georgians living there had to escape, while crossing the Saken-Chuberi pass, my grandmother’s sisters, Tamari and Tatiana, froze from the cold and their children had to bury them there. I don’t believe in dreams, but I was in Canada at the time, and I had a dream about my long-dead mother telling me she was cold. The next day my brother called me and told me this horrible news. I was very far away, but I was constantly thinking about the news that was happening here”, she says and recalls that she started creating works on Russian aggression even before the August war, and even then, in response to Russia’s continued aggression directed at Georgia and Ukraine, she created paintings.
While living in Jamaica, 8-9 months before the August war, I read an article in the famous newspaper The Guardian about expectations of Russian military aggression against Georgia. Therefore, if the current representatives of the Georgian government say that Georgia started the war, it is absurd: the article also showed that the Kremlin was preparing to attack Georgia long before the war. At that time, I wanted to talk about the dangers that Russia is threatening our country with. After reading this article, I drew “Black Sea” and “Sniper”. Just before the start of the war, in July, I finished these two large paintings, which I dedicated to the heroes fighting against Russia in Abkhazia and to my dead relatives.”
One of her well-known paintings “Diver” was a reaction to specific political negotiations. France was going to sell the battleship “Mistral” to Russia. This information, spread about a year after the August war, became a topic of protest on the air, therefore, the diver depicted in the picture blows up the Mistral. However, until then, France was a mediator in the process, as a result of which the 5-day war ended. Eter as a diver blowing up the Mistral in the painting was a protest, a reaction to the French government’s double standard. A few years after the August war, Russia’s aggression spread to Crimea, so France’s intention to sell the ship to Russia caused a lot of opposition. In the end, the negotiations failed, France sold the ship to Egypt.
“It was also important that I was physically far away and not in the middle of the news depicted on the paintings created on the theme of Georgia. Because I was away from home on the tropical island of Jamaica when I created these paintings, my clothing style is not in line with the dramatic themes I am talking about in the paintings. However, it was my intention to arouse the interest of the foreign visitors who did not know anything about Georgia before that”.
Eterichkadua.com
A series of paintings created in 2015-2017, in which she tells about his own family, proves that she can turn a personal story into a universal experience. As Eter says, in the last months of his life, his father, who had a brain tumor, “didn’t remember anything anymore”. Using photos of the children taken from the family album and details of flowers made by her brother from scraps, Eter created works that became a means of connecting with her father.
“My father didn’t remember anything in the last months, he was disconnected from reality, he lived in Canada, and I decided to take him to Jamaica so that we could spend the last months together. I took him out of the hospital and we went. When creating the paintings, I used black and white photos of me and Gotcha that my father took, and I painted the flowers that my brother makes from discarded plastic bottles. When he was in Jamaica, he was lying on the bed in my studio, I was drawing pictures in front of him, and I often asked him – “Dad, who are these?” Although he didn’t remember anyone or anything else, he only remembered Eter and Gotcha. I created this series for him”, she shares with us and tells us about another painting in the series, on which Gotcha and Eter transferred from a black-and-white photo onto the painting are in the center, and behind him is a female figure with her back, similar to Venus de Milo. She says that the figure of Venus always reminded her of her mother.
Eter and Gocha’s mother died years ago, when Eter was 18 and Gocha was 19. In the description of the painting “Mother” we read that Gotcha and his mother lived in Vladivostok, Russia, because Eter’s brother was studying medicine there. One day, mother left the house in her home dress and got lost. After a 3-day search, she was found in the hospital, lived for another 25 days, and died on the day a blood sample was taken from her spine. After that, the smile disappeared from Gotcha’s face, it is written in the description of the picture. The series combines pleasant childhood memories, ethereal and gotcha professional searches, a distant memory of a mother who died at an early age, and a portrait of an aging father.
Eterichkadua.com
For her, the measure of success is connecting with people through her paintings and the relevance of her work to this day, as well as the fact that she always painted what she wanted and was not concerned with the commercial success of the painting.
I didn’t have the kind of financial success that some famous artists in America have, and I didn’t care about it either. It is a success for me that people ask questions about my paintings, are interested in Georgia, that I survived by my profession, which is very difficult. When I came to Georgia, I met many young people who know and feel my paintings, for them my works are still relevant today, that is success.
Thoughts on Today’s Georgia and Plans for the Future
Although I have liked much of Ether Chkadua’s work for a long time, it was only while working on the interview that I discovered that in 2015 the she did a project with the organization Identity, which was a textual-visual attempt to talk about the experiences of queer people.
In her work, works with the image of queer people can be found since the 90’s, although the project “Anonymous” is qualitatively different. Text stories of queer people coming out [telling others about their sexual and gender identity] were printed on large canvases, visualized and exhibited. These personal stories were an opportunity for people who could not speak openly to share their experiences.
Liberali.ge
Work from the exhibition — anonymous
Eter tells us that she heard about the challenges that queer people face from American friends in the 90’s, and created some works. Returning here after the violent attack on Tbilisi Street in 2013, she decided to talk about the experiences of queer individuals.
“When I met new friends in America, some of whom were gays and lesbians, and they told me about themselves, the difficult experiences they had with their family or the brutal treatment by the police, I listened carefully,” she recalls and tells that even when she arrived in Georgia, she tried to explain to people simply, that queerphobia was absurd.
“Kiss” / Eterichkadua.com
“I tried to primitively explain that the hatred and fear of Georgians towards queers has no base, that queerness was not a virus that would be passed on to their children. We printed the stories of queer people in large print on canvases and exhibited them. It is much more impressive when a person tells you in the first person what happened to them when their parents found out, their class, the dentist, when they found out in prison. I wanted to record a reaction to the phrases of the Georgians – “don’t let them tell us, let them be by themselves.” I always prefer to see people in love — couples holding hands on the street, regardless of their sexual orientation, rather than priests with anaphors and long beards. Why should the Bible, written 21 centuries ago, dictate how we live? The Bible was written at a time when there was no water or condoms to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. Therefore, I think we should analyze the rules and frameworks of life invented at that time to be changed. How should we allow ourselves to restrict personal freedom of a person because of the values of the past?!”
I also asked about the homophobic laws of “Georgian Dream”, and in response she recalled the Soviet Union – “I thought that when the Soviet Union collapsed, people were freed, the possibility of free thinking appeared, that’s why it was incredible to understand the news of 2013. Even now, I can’t believe my ears that today I understand that someone can dictate to someone what their personal life should be.”
At the same time, she notes that it is not clear to her why Georgians think that Georgian culture and the history of civilization are in conflict with queer people.
Queers have always existed. For centuries they were fought and killed, but the civilized world understood that this is evil. I am very sorry that today this evil continues in my country. Obviously, the government is imitating Russia, but I hope it will not continue like this. A man should live with whom he is happy with and have the kind of sex he wants, and there should be no law on that.”
She says that if we want European integration, inviolability of human personal life, protection of rights should become important in our country.
She says that the laws of “Georgian Dream” are very similar to those adopted due to the Kremlin’s influence, and to describe this situation, he recalls Shota Rustaveli’s Kajeti castle. Kajeti castle, described in Vepkhistkaosani, is for her an allegory of people who cannot get out of their state of poverty, who refuse development and progress.
“It is terrible that our government and part of the citizens share Russia’s position. I didn’t think you would be so ashamed after Stalin”.
She does not lose hope that we will get rid of the Soviet remnants and uses the phrase of an American friend, according to which it takes 50 years to transition from one system to another, and we will need another two decades. According to her, Georgian youth also give hope, who are completely different from people who grew up during the Soviet Union, and the change of generations will definitely bring good results.
In case she stays in Georgia, she wants to hold exhibitions on topics that annoy her; About the outdated values that are harmful to the development of the country and thinking and distort the Georgian culture and vocabulary.
As she says, she changes creatively every ten years, starts looking for something new. Also, she wants to make a film that will follow her life after leaving the Soviet Union, about what happened behind her paintings for years.