Magdalena Mitterhofer, Ana Gzirishvili , “ Central Market (2)”, performance

In “Central Market (2)” , artists Ana Gzirishvili and Magdalena Mitterhofer weave their site-specific practices into a performative installation, staging “Central Market (1)” —a text originally written by Gzirishvili. That initial text explores  the sculptor’s creative process, tracing how the body moves and senses within a fragmented material world, navigating through memories, dreams, and language. At the heart of the work lies “Vagzali”, Tbilisi’s central market—imagined as a fractured body at the center of the city’s economic and social exchanges. The market presents itself as a chaotic, ambiguous public space, where shifting realities—urban and immaterial alike—intertwine with themes of fragmentation, disappearance, memory loss, and discontinuity, epitomizing the prevailing ethos of Georgia’s urban landscape. 

The essence of the market—together with Ana Gzirishvili’s texts and collected film material—unfolds in a new context, re-situated and reinterpreted by Magdalena Mitterhofer in Berlin.  In the space of the former butcher shop in transforming Moabit district, and soon home to a bookshop, performance evokes questions that are relevant for both Tbilisi and Berlin, such as urban planning, privatization, and gentrification and pointing out loopholes, systemic ruptures, and the potential for other ways of inhabiting or interrupting the ever changing city landscape and its politics. At its core is a close observation of what remains — traces of use, wear, and transformation through labor and devotion. Beauty appears along the edges, but always in fractured forms.

Part of the SHE-WAILERS program, supported by Förderung durch die Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt  des Landes Berlin. Text by Ana Gzirishvili is supported by Tbilisi Public Art Fund.