When adults make decisions, they should think about how their decisions will affect children. All adults should do what is best for children. Governments should make sure children are protected and looked after by their parents, or by other people when this is needed. Governments should make sure that people and places responsible for looking after children are doing a good job. – United Nations, Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Version), 2019.

Unfolding through accumulation and overprinting, this book focuses on the materiality and the drawings at the heart of Tolia Astakhishvili’s practice. From these same sheets, two further volumes will emerge, accompanying Figure of the Child, the artist’s solo exhibition at mumok (Vienna).

With contributions by Kirsty Bell, Fatima Hellberg, and Liesl Ujvary.

Edited by Tolia Astakhishvili, Fatima Hellberg, Manuela Ammer

Born in 1974 in Tbilisi, Tolia Astakhishvili works and lives between Berlin and Tbilisi. Her art practice includes sculpture, drawing, painting, sound, video and writing. Her architectural environments, which integrate these various media, are designed in conversation with the exhibition site. They evoke spaces in transformation, like a suspended construction site whose origins and completion remain undefined. Everyday objects, drawings, photographs, mural inscriptions and videos suggest a diffuse human presence. Together, they weave a fictional narrative marked by a psychological dimension, sometimes tinged with surrealism. Her recent solo exhibitions include Result, LC Queisser, Tbilisi; between father and mother, Sculpture Center, New York (2024); The First Finger (chapter II), Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2023); The First Finger, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2023); I Think It’s Closed, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld (2023); I am the secret meat, Felix Gaudlitz, Vienna (2022). She has also participated in group exhibitions at the MACRO Museum, Rome; Condo Complex, London (2024); Kunsthalle Zürich, Zürich; Emalin, London; Molitor Gallery, Berlin; LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2023); Shahin Zarinbal, Berlin; LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2022); Art Hub Copenhagen, Copenhagen; Räume für Kunst, Kerpen; Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Capitain Petzel Gallery, Berlin (2021); Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2019); Cabinet, London (2018). In 2025, her work was exhibited at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation in Venice, under the direction of Hans Ulrich Obrist, and as part of The Gatherers at MoMA PS1, in New York.

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Bei allen Entscheidungen, die Erwachsene treffen, sollen sie zuerst daran denken, wie sich ihre Entscheidungen auf Kinder auswirken. Alle Erwachsenen sollen das tun, was für Kinder das Beste ist. Regierungen sollen sicherstellen, dass Kinder von ihren Eltern oder, wenn nötig, von anderen Menschen geschützt und betreut werden. Regierungen sollen sicherstellen, dass Menschen und Einrichtungen, die sich um Kinder kümmern, gute Arbeit leisten. – Vereinte Nationen, Übereinkommen über die Rechte des Kindes (Kinderversion), 2019.

Dieses Buch, das sich durch Überlagerung und Verdichtung entfaltet, widmet sich den Zeichnungen und der Materialität im Zentrum von Tolia Astakhishvilis Praxis. Ausgehend von denselben Blättern entstehen zwei weitere Bände, die Figure of the Child, die Einzelausstellung der Künstlerin im mumok (Wien), begleiten.

Mit Beiträgen von Kirsty Bell, Fatima Hellberg und Liesl Ujvary.