At the Threshold: The Russian Painters of Tbilisi
After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, tens of thousands of Russians crossed into Georgia. Many have since moved on, to Serbia, to Europe, some back to Russia. For those who stayed, their presence here is still a difficult subject, and the rents that climbed steeply after 2022 have only recently begun to come down. Ivan, a painter, arrived in 2024, after Uzbekistan and other places, as the first wave was already thinning. People come by his flat and some stay. A friend from his art-school years. Someone who came to sleep one night and didn’t leave. Drawing from a model on the floor. Tea and an open art book. Sketching in the street among the Georgian licence plates. Sorting through drawings late at night. Building a backdrop for a channel to teach drawing online. I photographed this from 25 May to 24 August 2026. I was a Japanese visitor and they let me in. I didn’t set out to make this work. I was living there, and this is what accumulated. Most of what gets written about the influx is numbers, or the friction on the street. This is what it looked like from inside the flat.