Sauli Tvaltvadze
European Media Portrait
27 August–20 September 2026
In 2023, I moved from Helsinki to a small Polish town, where I spent a year volunteering at an integration center for Ukrainian refugees. I wanted to understand, at grassroots level, how the European Union appears to those arriving from the outside. Based on this experience, I created the video performance European Media Portrait.
The work is based on a video of an educational session that I happened to film while making a promotional video for the integration center. In the video, an employee teaches the center’s clients vocabulary related to physical appearance while simultaneously describing their bodies. When watching the video, I was wondering why these comments feel like such a violent, yet human way of encountering something unfamiliar.
In my video performance, the focus shifts from the refugees to myself, and the viewer assumes the role of the observer. As the performer, I convey information about the object of the gaze by interpreting, for the camera, the video I recorded at the integration center. The video portrait created through the performance is left open to the viewer’s interpretation.
Sauli Tvaltvadze (b. 1996) is a Finnish artist with a master’s degree in fine arts, whose work mainly focuses on digital media and performance. This exhibition at Galleria Huuto is Tvaltvadze’s first solo exhibition. His first solo exhibition abroad will be held in Gdańsk, Poland, in spring 2027.
Thank you
Kimmo Kaivanto Foundation
Kone Foundation
Paulo Foundation
Contact information
saulitv (at) proton.me
www.saulitvaltvadze.fi
