Solo exhibition at +1: Mariami Tsotadze With roots this deep you would think I would touch something

Mariami Tsotadze's solo exhibition features paintings that circle around identity, displacement, and cultural belonging. About Mariami Tsotadze (b. 1999, Tbilisi, GE) paints portraits of her own life, each one veiled just enough to keep its secret. What begins as something lived is gradually folded, cropped and displaced until it can no longer be simply recognised. For the viewer, the result is a scene that feels familiar yet slightly off. For the artist, each painting remains a letter: addressed to something she finds difficult to name, and perhaps even harder to read. Born in Georgia and raised in Belgium, Tsotadze has lived from an early age between different ideas of home. She speaks the language, carries the culture and was shaped by the country she grew up in, yet her Georgian origins keep returning, sometimes softly, sometimes unavoidably, with the same question: "who am I when no one tells you where you come from? Her paintings do not answer it". They circle around it. They are the traces of a search, of roots reaching deep enough to touch something, while still unsure where they belong. What unites her work is an absence of eye contact. Bodies appear, but faces rarely do. Figures are cut off by the edge of the canvas, turned away, reduced to a shoulder, a lap, a pair of hands. It is as if someone has just left the picture and only their traces remain. Recognition shifts from the face to the body: to clothing, posture and above all to hands; fragile, intimate, intertwined like braided flowers. Her imagery is rich in growth and rootedness: gardens, flowers, trees, the body that becomes a plant. These motifs carry a charge that is both personal and cultural. In Georgian tradition, the country's Christianity is said to have arrived with a cross of grapevine bound together with a woman's hair; vine, braid and belonging woven into one symbol. Tsotadze's braided hands and entangled stems echo that image without illustrating it. Roots, in her work, are never simply a place of origin. They are something one has to dig for, cherish and at times carry alone. Every painting starts as a drawing: a practice of travelling between places that mirrors the in-between position her work explores. From these sketches, compositions are slowly developed on canvas, where colour and texture are layered intuitively and simple-looking scenes reveal subtle shifts on closer inspection. Painting, for Tsotadze, is a way of listening: to material, to intuition, to memory. Behind the work lies a grief that does not easily let itself be named, and which has become, perhaps, its driving force: the need to go back, to delve, to find out where one's roots are. Tsotadze resists autobiography precisely because it would feel too exposed. What she offers instead is a form of veiled intimacy: paintings that are deeply personal at their source, yet open enough for anyone who has ever felt slightly out of place to find themselves in them. Mariami Tsotadze obtained her Master's degree in Painting at LUCA School of Arts, Ghent after fashion, and lives and works in Antwerp. Her work has been shown in exhibitions including LUXE BENEN (Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam, 2024, curated by Ralf Kokke), After Painting After Painting (After Painting) at PLUS-ONE Projects, Art Week Paris (2024), Unframed Gallery, New South gallery, and participated multi group exhibitions at PIZZA Gallery, her first solo exhibition 'Conceptual Romanticism in 2024 at PIZZA Gallery and solo exhibition 'With roots this deep, you would think I would touch something' at PLUS-ONE Projects in 2026. Mariami Tsotadze is represented by PIZZA Gallery. About the audio piece in the back room: Composer: Alina Talipova Co-composer: Toon van Beek Title: Looking in, Looking out Sonic work 9' 2026 This piece is created from field recordings captured in De Maatjes, a reed marshland near the border of the Netherlands and Belgium. It is an ever-changing landscape that faces many challenges but at the same time, is a crucial place for birds during the breeding season. Underneath lies a question of perspective. The same idea, theme or experience can be turned upside down depending on where you stand. Close to themes of migration and being part of and living in a multicultural society, what sometimes feels like a burden can also be an immense beauty and richness that adds to life. Read more Toggle Painting