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.
My art practice is dedicated to peace-building. Presenting narratives built upon personal stories from within the experience of conflict; a wall of remembering that acts as a fortification against repeating histories. I believe in the power of art and beauty to bring people together and that peace 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, I seek to re-examine our grand political narratives from a diametric personal position. Deploying any appropriate medium, my work responds to the most immediate socio-economic and political global developments with urgency. Humour and beauty allow me to address often disturbing concerns, reflecting the complex paradigm of our existence, which is simultaneously sublime and horrific.
I was born in Georgia (former USSR) in 1976 and immigrated to Australia in 1996. Prior to pursuing a career as a visual artist, I worked as a children’s book illustrator and designer, creating over 150 titles. I also designed theatre sets and costumes for a number of years.
Rhana Devenport (ONZM), director of the Art Gallery of South Australia) said: “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.”
Nina Sanadze is represented by Daine Singer gallery.
Interviews, artist talks, reviews and essays
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
.
.
Nina Sanadze’s artist talk at the Victorian College of the Arts, Art Forum series, 13 May 2021:
.
.
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.
.
.
MPavilion series Public Art Field Guide by Lynda Roberts:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Incinerator Art Award artist talks in an online symposium with curator Jake Treacy:
.
.
Okenyo: Anthropology behind the scenes video:
.
.
Interview with Maddy Weeks on Chanel 31, The Leak about Living Room series and Arts are Newsworthy campaign: