Presented in the Ceremonial Hall area of the University of Vienna within the framework of the 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Byzantium and Beyond Byzantium,  Posterity: Glittering Materiality explores the dialogue between Byzantine and medieval Georgian traditions and contemporary artistic practice through the work of Nina Gamsachurdia, a Georgian artist based in Basel. Curated by Lechbinska Gallery, the exhibition examines the transmission of artistic knowledge, material practices, and symbolic systems across centuries through continual reinterpretation and renewal.

Educated at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts and trained in Byzantine studies, Gamsachurdia continued her research after relocating to Basel in 1992, where restoration practice, art-historical scholarship, and contemporary artistic production converged. Her practice embodies the dual role of artist and researcher, carrying forward historical techniques and symbolic systems through continuous reinterpretation rather than reconstruction of the past.

Nina Gamsachurdia's steles, created from primed linden wood, gold leaf, and hand-ground mineral pigments, approach posterity as a living process: the transmission of artistic knowledge, spiritual thought, and material experience from one generation to the next. Their upright, tactile forms evoke the tradition of Georgian early Christian stone crosses, stelae, and architectural reliefs, while their luminous surfaces translate historical techniques into a contemporary language of abstraction.

Among these works, the multi-layered abstract stele stands out as one of the clearest expressions of Gamsachurdia's artistic language. Existing between sculpture and painting, her freestanding steles create perceptual fields in which material, light, and surface become inseparable. Drawing upon Byzantine art, Georgian Christian heritage, icon painting, and historical research, they transform inherited systems of representation into a language of contemplative abstraction, where symbolic presence becomes the primary vehicle of meaning.
Her work also enters into dialogue with the legacy of postwar spiritual abstraction, in which abstraction became a means of exploring transcendence, memory, and the relationship between the visible and the invisible. As a twenty-first-century artist, however, Gamsachurdia approaches these questions from a different historical position.  Unlike many strands of postwar abstraction, which often emphasized a break with inherited artistic languages, she reactivates historical traditions through contemporary intuition, scholarly research, and meticulous material practice. Her work thus bridges the spiritual aspirations of postwar abstraction with a renewed engagement with the material and symbolic systems of the past.
This understanding is grounded in the longer history of Georgian Christian visual culture. Following the adoption of Christianity in the fourth century, Georgia became integrated into the wider Christian cultural world of Late Antiquity, engaging deeply with Byzantine artistic and theological traditions while developing a distinctive visual language shaped by local traditions, regional, and transregional influences. Throughout the medieval period, architecture, sculpture, painting, and liturgical ritual formed an integrated sacred environment in which material functioned as a mediator between the visible and the invisible.

Such an understanding approaches the image as a dynamic phenomenon activated through light, material presence, and the movement of the viewer. Gamsachurdia's steles likewise unfold through changing illumination, inviting a perceptual encounter rather than passive observation. Her work also echoes Hans Belting's conception of the image as belonging not only to the history of art but also to wider systems of memory, ritual, and belief. Rather than autonomous aesthetic objects, her steles function as sites where materiality, memory, and spiritual reflection converge.

One of the earliest and most significant expressions of this visual tradition is the Davati Stela (6th century), an exceptional monument of early Georgian Christian relief sculpture. Here, carved stone, image, and inscription operate together as vehicles of sacred meaning. Particularly remarkable is the presence of the Georgian Asomtavruli alphabet, traditionally interpreted as a complete sequence of thirty-seven letters, associated with the figures of the archangels Michael and Gabriel. As one of the earliest surviving monuments in which the Georgian alphabet appears as a complete sequence, the Davati Stela transforms writing itself into a theological and visual symbol, revealing the central role attributed to language within early Georgian Christian culture.

Gamsachurdia's contemporary stelae engage in a sustained dialogue with this legacy. Although executed in wood, gold leaf, and mineral pigments rather than carved stone, they share with early Georgian monuments an understanding of the vertical form as a bearer of memory and symbolic presence. Their luminous, layered surfaces also resonate with the broader Georgian tradition of treating precious materials — visible in Georgian cloisonné enamel and goldsmithing — as carriers of radiance, colour, and spiritual meaning. Without replicating historical forms, Gamsachurdia reinterprets this visual and material language of brilliance, preciousness, and illumination through a contemporary practice. Her stelae transform the logic of medieval relief into a meditation on permanence, light, and spiritual continuity.
As an artist, researcher, and scholar of Byzantine art, Gamsachurdia approaches historical techniques not as acts of reconstruction but as living forms of knowledge. Gold, silver, and copper leaf, hand-ground mineral pigments, polished grounds, and meticulously prepared surfaces are not merely technical procedures but constitute a mode of thinking through materiality. The slow rhythm of making recalls aspects of medieval workshop practice, where technical expertise, material knowledge, and spiritual purpose were closely interconnected.
Matter is therefore never a passive support. The gradual preparation of pigments, the successive application of metal leaf, and the final layers of natural resins transform making itself into a form of research. Historical techniques are reactivated not to reproduce the past but to reveal their continuing intellectual and spiritual potential.

Light completes the work. Gold leaf and mineral pigments respond continuously to changing illumination and the movement of the viewer, transforming the image from a static object into a perceptual event. Through the interplay of matter, light, and perception, Gamsachurdia creates a contemporary language in which historical knowledge becomes a living visual experience.
Created through a sustained dialogue between Georgian heritage, Byzantine thought, and contemporary artistic practice, Gamsachurdia's steles demonstrate that artistic traditions survive through continual reinterpretation rather than preservation alone.

Posterity: Glittering Materiality proposes that posterity is neither inheritance nor repetition, but the continual reactivation of cultural memory through artistic practice. Here, stone is translated into pigment, light becomes image, and historical knowledge is transformed into contemporary experience. Gamsachurdia's work affirms that the past remains active not because it is preserved unchanged, but because it continues to generate new forms of artistic thought.