Mariam SonghulashviliAbout Me / CV
Projects arranged in a Chronological Order
 esaa.mariamis@gmail.com        

Mariam Songhulashvili is a visual artist based in Tbilisi, Georgia, working primarily with generative and interactive time-based visual art. Their practice explores several themes: the perception of time and memory - especially focusing on the understanding of queer temporality; the boundaries between abstraction and narration -  exploring it in a sense of gamification of reality perception; and the experience of being surrounded by urban, liminal spaces. Collaboration is central to their practice, typically involving musicians and writers.


CV  ↜






Cactus: Experimental Opera What happens when a modern person, who falls out of objective, socially systematized time, becomes trapped in their own subjective time?

“Cactus” is a story about systemic collapse and psychological crisis. The architect’s orderly world—where he is convinced that he controls time (“every second freezes when I press the elevator button”)—collapses within a minute. Panic, chaos, and a series of claustrophobic attacks begin. Opposing this inner chaos is the “cactus” — an object placed deep within the stage, radiating a clean, minimalist, and stable resonance.

It is the collision of rational mind with organic reality — with a sense of time that lies beyond subjective and objective time. It is a story about transformation, which begins only after the total collapse of the modern individual.


Characters and Performers:
The Architect - Giorgi Goderdzishvili (Bass)
Cactus -  Christopher Manning (Clarinet, Bass Clarinet)

    Composer: Tiko Ghoghoberidze
    Librettist: Mindia Arabuli
    Design / Video Projection: Mariam Songhulashvili
    Costume Designer: Uta Bekaia
    Director: Ilia Korkashvili
    Sound Director: Lasha Natenadze
    Lighting: Achi Arghanashvili

    ©️ Goethe-Institut Georgien/ Photo: Giorgi Kolbaia/ Video: Shio Khidasheli










    Current / მიმდინარე“Current” is an experimental audiovisual series by gabiskiriamalia and Mariam Songhulashvili.

    gabiskiriamalia is a digital avatar that transforms urban space into a two-dimensional playfield, where street sounds turn into synthetic ones. The visual narrative of “Current” is based on “found footage”.  This audio-visual  combination tries to render reality non-normative.

    Audio: gabiskiriamalia
    Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili
    Hand-sewn recycled leather masks by Anna Khmaladze

    Performed at Haraki




    Memory Inspired by the work of women directors from the 1980s and 1990s who explored memory and the past through experimental film, this project utilizes a live video feed directed at a carefully assembled memory box.

    Memory is contextual; it exists only through the perspective of the moment of recollection. That is, we insert our present selves into what has happened, and thus memory transforms each time.

    The act of remembering becomes a form of self-invention - a rebuilding of the self, anew, every time.

    Memory is condensed in objects.


    Audio: Zeskneli
    Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili

    Performed at Tkeshi Festival 2025
















    Urban Hymn
    The project explores sound as a tool of power in the urban space.

    Traffic, constant movement, and road noise create a sonic backdrop of everyday life.

    These sounds speak of urban tension, overloaded systems/roads, and overwhelmed minds.

    Urban Hymn -  the main voice: Tbilisi’s traffic.
    Background sounds - songs about Tbilisi.
    gabiskiriamalias original tracks.
    A sound that is heard when these sounds are not.

    The visual component of the work combines data that describes the urban space and is publicly available online - essentially, the city’s digital footprint. This includes meteorological, cartographic, satellite, and statistical materials. Such numerical representation of urban space, at first glance, seem entirely detached from the experience of physically being in that space. In order to describe the complex system of the city, to perceive and understand it as a whole, it becomes necessary to identify patterns hidden within the data.

    While the sonic element is directly based on the sense of presence in urban space, the visual element enters into a dialogue with it, introducing a digital body - an avatar - into the city’s digital imprint.


    Audio: Gabiskiriamalia
    Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili









    Co-Occurence
     Separating and coming together. The rhythms of rays. Abstract piece created with the use of bare white light in mind. 

    On or Off. Dissonant or in harmony.

    Created with the use of projection mapping on the building of the Goethe Institute of Georgia.


    Audio: Anushka Chkheidze
    Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili

    Created for the Goethe Institute of Georgia









    ??? ‘Since... liminal time is not controlled by the clock, it is a time.. when anything might, even should, happen.’  (v.turner)



    Audio: Gabiskiriamalia
    Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili

    Performed at ‘Borders & Exits’ at Art House Gori





    The river, the ambiguous time, and all the other namesSomewhere between a humorous broadcast and a poetic meditation, the project attempts to engage with the Mtkvari—to grasp its past, its image, the popular knowledge accumulated around it, its size and areas of coverage. In trying to better understand it, it becomes estranged from its familiar face, and at the same time more intimate with its unknowability.

    Dedicated to everyone who is lost in the current.

    • Text: Mariam Songhulashvili & Mariam Kakhniashvili
    • Audio: Found
    • Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili





    Tkivili 1.0Audio-Visual representation for a text written by @prostheticwings, conserning the chronicity of pain:

    ‘Constantly arriving with new strength, new form, new frequency, it leaves new scratches [or] cracks on your mind.

    It has no point of reference, no trajectory of flow, it is simply scattered within you.

    At times, it spills over from its course and devours even the boundary that separates “you” from “the other.”

    Pain deceives the mind in fog and carries the body along.’

    Visually this is illustrated through cellular and microscopic imagery. The processes of separation and unification alternate, till the complete dissassembly into the white void. This loops the work, which in its turn through repetition emphasizes the chronicity.

    • Text: prosthetic wings
    • Audio: Gabiskiriamalia
    • Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili





    2064 / BlurFeaturing original music and AI-assisted collaborative vocals and lyrics, this work captures nostalgia and self-irony within the technological possibilities of the future.  ‘we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past...Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview’. The visual texture of the piece relies on archival photographic imagery, manipulation of the real-world 3D scans, and animating the digital avatar of Gabiskiriamalia.

    Audio: Gabiskiriamalia
    Visuals: Mariam
    Songhulashvili





    • Malady of (false) Hope
    Archival imagery trigger the nostalgic longing for the past, which can never be grasped. The photographic sources depicting Tbilisi, Georgia  create the illusion of three dimensionality, but upon close inspection dissolve into one another, leaving one with an failed attempt to grasp a fleeting emotion of nostalgia. 

    This work is based on archival imagery of Tbilisi from the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia. 


    Audio - Obelisk by Arca*
    *Disclaimer - non-original audio






    Have a safe way home. Tread carefully‘It’s been confirmed that the world has no edge, where do we go from here? ‘

    ‘Have a Safe Way Home. Tread Carefully’ is a one-hour meditative piece, heavily based on a text that explores the emotions of being on the road. The work tries to poetically capture the process of returning ‘home.’ Two voices - through both audio and written text - engage in a dialogue that leads to no  conclusion, except the reminder to tread carefully. In the process, however, they share something more important than the end point itself:

    ‘Show me -
    The path I will get lost on.
    The compass I cannot return with.
    The sea I cannot sail across.

    I am also forgiven for having the ability to endure more than was necessary.’

    Visual Manipulation: Mariam Songhulashvili
    Audio Selection: Mariam Kakhniashvili
    Text: Mariam Kakhniashvili & Mariam Songhulashvili






    • Dots and Lines
    "Dots and Lines" is a collaborative work of two independent artists, Nino Davadze and Mariam Songhulashvili, which observes the audio-visual characteristics of the city. The piece is a synthesis of visual images of the city and field recordings, where both artists process the material with a random principle. 


    A city is a set of intersection points and lines connecting them. These relations create a kind of urban arithmetic, which emphasizes the simultaneous coexistence of both an orderly system and a random, changing space in the city.


    The visual texture of the piece relies on cartographic and meteorological data of Tbilisi and is triggered by the audio impulses. The “Dot and Lines” as sonic form is the collection of fragments recorded in the city, which on one hand, reflects on social aspects of everyday life, but on the other hand,  opposes it by brutal sound interaction. The audio piece is partly improvised, partly pre-prepared, where the raw audio material is processed into rhythmic or harmonic phrases.

    • Audio: Nino Davadze
    • Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili





    Who’s There? A playful personality test that combines projection and an interactive questionnaire. Upon completion, the viewer receives a personalized audio-visual experience, accompanied by a text description of their personality type. The visuals incorporate and manipulate small snippets from various films.

    Sources Used:

    Mirror of Holland (1950)
    L’amore (1956)
    Rocco and his Brothers (1960)
    The Leopard (1963)
    Le Bonheur (1965)
    The Damned (1969)
    Movie VO (1982)
    The So-Called Caryatids (1984)
    Allers Venues (1984)
    U.S.S.A. (1985)
    Matador (1986)
    Close Up (1990)
    Happy End (1996)
    Dream Work (2001)
    Birdsong (2008)
    The Title was Shot (2009)
    Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives (2010)
    Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The Art of Flying (2015)
    Glacier (2017)
    Half Eaten Cow (2017)
    Shimmer (2019)
    Autumn Colors (2020)
    Osmosis (2022)


    Visual Edit and Manipulation: Mariam Songhulashvili
    Text: Mariam Kakhniashvili 


    გაზაფხული / gazapkhuliFor the past two years, every spring, Tbilisi loses its shape and rhythm as familiar landmarks take on new meanings. This six-minute audio-reactive video installation uses geodata from eight locations tied to protests, transforming the city’s physical structure into reactive point clouds, that respond dynamically to Nino Davadze’s musical composition, capturing Tbilisi’s diverse and chaotic character as a city that feels both fragmented and central. Buildings represented as points love their form, dissolving into an unrecognizable, unstructured chaos. This visual fragmentation is contrasted with lines from an abstract poem that articulates the struggle of surviving within a crumbling system, serving as a souvenir of experiences that remains even as the city’s architecture collapses into disorder.


    • Audio: Nino Davadze
    • Visuals: Mariam Songhulashvili