Elene Melikidze
Painting
Elene Melikidze (b. 1999, Tbilisi) is a visual artist based in Tbilisi who works primarily with oil on canvas. Working between figuration and abstraction, her practice explores emotional vulnerability, inner tension, and quiet forms of resistance through expressive and symbolic imagery. Her work navigates intimate psychological states, weaving personal memory with broader social and emotional narratives.
Her work explores intimate psychological states, intertwining personal memory with broader social and emotional narratives, and presents open-ended images that suggest processes of transformation, fragility, and restraint. Time, waiting, and a sense of suspension appear recurrently, generating scenes that oscillate between the recognizable and the undefined.
Melikidze has presented her work in group exhibitions in Georgia and internationally, including art fairs, independent spaces, and exhibition projects in Europe and New York. Her practice continues to evolve through pictorial research and the exploration of new ways to narrate complex emotional experiences through painting.
Statement
My work explores inner emotional states shaped by vulnerability, fear, care, and resistance. I am interested in moments where emotion is present but unresolved, where figures exist between tension and stillness, protection and exposure. Through painting, I reflect on personal experience and memory, and on the subtle ways individual emotion connects to a shared, collective subconscious shaped by social and cultural conditions.
I work primarily with figurative imagery, allowing distortion, symbolism, and repetition to emerge intuitively. The body appears fragmented, disguised, or transformed, functioning as both a personal and collective form. Landscapes and interior spaces become emotional environments rather than literal settings, carrying traces of anxiety, tenderness, and survival.
Painting allows me to remain with uncertainty. I build layered oil surfaces to preserve a sense of fragility while resisting clarity or fixed narratives. Rather than offering answers, my work invites the viewer into an intimate space where meaning unfolds through silence, ambiguity, and emotional presence.