I acknowledge the traditional owners and sovereign custodians of the land on which I am situated, the peoples of the Boonwurrung language group of the Kulin nation. I extend my respect to their Ancestors and all First Peoples and Elders past, present, and future.
Studio photography of Nina Sanadze at Gertrude Contemporary, 2022. Image: Tim Herbert.
Nina Sanadze is a Soviet-born, Melbourne-based artist who works with monuments, archives and political action. Sanadze presents narratives built upon personal stories from within the experience of conflict; a wall of remembering that acts as a fortification against repeating histories. She believes in the power of art and beauty to bring people together and that peace-building is achieved through proactive work, determination, negotiation, and the forging of narratives designed to unite competing ideologies.
Presenting appropriated original artefacts, blunt replicas, or documentary films as witnesses and evidence, Sanadze seeks to re-examine grand political narratives from a diametric personal position. Deploying any appropriate medium, her work responds to the most immediate socio-economic and political global developments with urgency. Humour and beauty allow her to address often disturbing concerns, reflecting the complex paradigm of our existence, which is simultaneously sublime and horrific.
“Drawing on her own familial history in Georgia (former USSR), Nina Sanadze is compelled to respond to some of the great forces of our time – ideology, authority, monuments, conflict and survival – amidst the transient yet insistent fabric of memory, beauty and tenderness. Evocative and dramatic, Nina eschews the once victorious into a tumbling morphic vortex of fragility. Nina possesses a powerful ability to draw on the political, the familial and the poetic with great clarity and aesthetic poignancy.”
— Rhana Devenport (ONZM), Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia
“Nina Sanadze is a contemporary artist whose thought-provoking works encourage audiences to consider the roles of monuments and their meanings, and how these can change over time.”
— Tony Ellwood AM, Director, NGV
“It is said that actions speak louder than words, a false binary that disregards the resonance and power of combining the two. For Nina Sanadze, a Soviet-born, Melbourne-based artist-activist, the two are inextricably linked. Her latest work, as much of her oeuvre, stands boldly at the intersections of actions and words, art and activism.”
— Nadine von Cohen, The Saturday Paper
Nina Sanadze was born in Georgia (former USSR) in 1976, immigrated to Russia as a refugee in 1992, and immigrated to Australia in 1996. She has an Honours Degree, Graphic Design & Book Illustration from Moscow State University of Publishing and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victorian College of Arts.
Social practice is an important facet of Sanadze’s work, she is a member of Melbourne art collective ShrewD and the founding Artistic Director of Collective Polyphony Festival which was held across multiple gallery spaces in Victoria in 2023.
Sanadze is currently holding a survey show at the Ian Potter: National Gallery of Victoria. She has held solo exhibitions at Kunstall 3,14, Norway (2023), the 3rd Tbilisi Triennial, Georgia (2018), and she has staged various public art projects including the public art event, Returning the Names, together with Memorial Italia, held at the Venice Biennale, Italy (2022). The other solo shows were held at Daine Singer (2021, 2023), 101 Collins St (2023), Point Nepean Quarantine Station (2022), Victorian College of the Arts (2020), Second Space Projects (2020), Cathedral Cabinet (2020), and Melbourne’s Living Museum of the West (2018). Her public art projects include Call to Peace (2022), temporary public art funded by the City of Port Phillip, South Melbourne, Blockage (2019), three public art installations in St Kilda, Melbourne. Sanadze has also participated in group exhibitions at the La Trobe Art Institute, MADA gallery, Gertrude Glasshouse, Gertrude Contemporary, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), ACE Open (Adelaide), Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, Wyndham Gallery, Living Museum of the West, Meat Market, George Paton Gallery, Stockroom, Blindside, Trocadero, Bus Projects, St Kilda Town Hall, Point Nepean Quarantine Station, Federation Square, Alliance Française and Buxton Contemporary Public Screen.
Selected Awards, Grants, Residencies
2023 Deakin Small Sculpture Award winner
2021 The Churchie Emerging Art Prize winner
2018 Incinerator Art for Social Change winner
2023 Creative Hoardings city of Melbourne commission
2022 Gertrude Residency Program recipient
2022 Artistic Director at Blindside ARI
2020, 2022 Police Point Artist Residency, Mornington Peninsula Shire, Recipient
2022 City of Port Phillip Reimagine Public Art Activation Competition winner
2007, 2017 City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Fund recipient
2019, 2020 Fiona Myer Award Victorian College of the Arts Grad Show winner
2019 Bus Projects Award, Victorian College of the Arts Grad Show winner
2005 Whitley Award for the Best Publication winner
2002 Green Room Award for the Most Outstanding Production, The Grand Feeling winner
2001 The Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing by Australian Publishers Association finalist
Please email nina @ ninasanadze.com to request CV.
Interviews, artist talks, reviews and essays
Vogue Vanguard – Nina Sanadze, March 2024 issue.
Jewish Museum of Australia reopens with a new look, The Jewish Independent, 29 February 2024.
New Children’s Space and exhibitions in 2024, The Australian Jewish News, 29 February 2024.
What does an artist collective look like today? by Celina Lei, Arts hub, September 2023.
Returning the Names: Australia and Venice, SBS podcast by Irina Burmistrova in Russian.
Nina Sanadze and Returning the Names in Venice, Arty. Russia SBS interview with Irina Burmistrova.
Australian artist takes activism to Venice. Arts Hub review by Celina Lei.
The Age 20 photos of the week, April 1, 2022.
Arts Hub review by Celina Lei: Women artists reckon with war, 29 March 2022.
ABC Saturday Breakfast interview with Alice Zaslavsky, 2 April 2022.
SBS Australia review: Australian artist’s monument a ‘call to peace’ amid Ukraine-Russia tensions.
Interview on SBS Russian, Arty: ‘Like a prayer.’ Sculpture by Nina Sanadze ‘Call to Peace’.
Portfolio, Nina Sanadze, “Revised Commemoration” in Public Art: What Future for the Monument? publication at Journal of the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC), Issue 46, no. 2 (Fall 2021)
From the rubble: Art prize winner a monument to former Soviet Union, InQueensland, 25 October 2021
Farrago » Art Musing: Monumental Questions by Lisa Jacomos
A review by Azza Zein at Women’s Art Register Bulletin #68, July 2021
Living Room series review by Azza Zein_ WAR Bulletin_Issue68_July2021
LEGACY catalogue essay by Dr Ashley Crawford
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age interview with Sumeyya Ilanbey
Silences between ticks of a clock_catalogue essay by Karl Halliday
Eddie Ayres, Nina Sanadze’s Bollard City, The Hub on Arts interview, Radio National 621AM, March 21, 2018:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-art-show/the-hub-on-art-weds-21st-march/9566560
Richelle Hunt, Interview with Nina Sanadze, ABC Afternoon Radio Melbourne 774AM, March 14, 2018:
Nina Sanadze talks about Living Room series with Irina Burmistrova on Russian SBS, October 2021:
https://www.sbs.com.au/language/russian/audio/arty-where-do-artists-live-nina-sanadze-s-living-room-project
SBS radio interview with Olga Klepova
J-Air 88FM: Talking to the Max, 23 March 2022.
Sima Tsyskin, A Bollard As the New Icon of Our Time, SBS Russian Radio interview, March 16, 2018: https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/russian/en/audiotrack/bollard-new-icon-our-time
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Nina Sanadze’s artist talk at the Victorian College of the Arts, Art Forum series, 13 May 2021:
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Teaching for Peace and Peace-building; International UNESCO’s Arts Education Week: Nina Sanadze and Angela Saldanha in conversation with Kate Coleman, Co-director of the UNESCO Observatory of Arts Education at the University of Melbourne, 26 May 2022.
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MPavilion series Public Art Field Guide by Lynda Roberts:
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Incinerator Art Award artist talks in an online symposium with curator Jake Treacy:
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Okenyo: Anthropology behind the scenes video:
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Interview with Maddy Weeks on Chanel 31, The Leak about Living Room series and Arts are Newsworthy campaign: