Bukia Vakhania Tbilissi/Berlin

Bukia Vakhania (Tbilisi) and Kayokoyuki (Tokyo) present a joint booth featuring works by David Apakidze and Yohei Imamura. Though working in distinct cultural and visual languages, both transform traditional techniques into contemporary, embodied forms. Their practices are rooted in memory and the body, yet follow different trajectories: Imamura builds meditative, sculptural “ink landscapes” through a unique silkscreen process that accumulates thousands of ink layers, while Apakidze assembles stained glass and found materials into intimate structures shaped by queer identity and cultural memory. One works through ritual and accumulation; the other through iconography and narrative.

David Apakidze (b. 1998, Poti) is a visual artist, curator, and art historian. Working across sculpture, embroidery, printmaking, and stained glass, he reinterprets Georgian Orthodox iconography through a queer lens. Awarded the 2025 KVOST Scholarship and Claus Michaletz Prize; exhibitions include Zachęta (Warsaw, 2024), MeetFactory (Prague, 2025), Gallery Artbeat (Tbilisi, 2024), and the upcoming Matter of Art Biennale (Prague, 2026).