Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025 Recap: A Dance Across Georgia

Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025 unfolds across Georgia as a quiet choreography of images, expanding beyond the capital into Gori, Gurjaani, Kutaisi, and Lanchkhuti. More than a street art festival, it moves at the pace of the city itself… attentive to rhythm, gesture, and the everyday life that surrounds each wall.

With more than fifteen new monumental works appeared across residential buildings and public façades, created by Georgian and international artists working side by side.

Georgia Street Art murals

Care, Growth, and the Weight of Concrete

In Vazisubani, Edoardo Ettorre’s Concrete Horizons introduces a moment of quiet cooperation. Two young girls lift a potted plant toward the light, adjusting its position so it has a chance to grow. The gesture feels ordinary, almost improvised, yet deeply considered. Against the weight of the surrounding concrete, the mural gently asks what it takes to sustain life in the city. Attention, cooperation, and the understanding that care, even at its simplest, is a shared responsibility.

Edoardo Ettorre’s Concrete Horizons

Nearby, Artez’s Thirst for Nature continues this reflection. A figure drinks from a vase overflowing with flowers, an act between nourishment and longing. Set within the everyday rhythm of Gurjaani, the mural reflects a quiet imbalance, and the deeper desire for reconnection with nature.

Artez’s Thirst for Nature

Reflection and Inner Distance

Fintan Magee’s Girl in Mirrors captures a moment of stillness that feels almost private. A young woman faces multiple reflections of herself, as if caught between who she is and who she might become once the decision is made. Rather than offering resolution, the mural lingers in uncertainty, reflecting the quiet negotiations of identity, self-perception, and emotional distance that often unfold away from view.

Girl in the Mirrors, Fintan Magee

Dance Across the City at Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025

One of the defining threads of Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025 is the Dance Series of five murals, created by TMF Studio, and artist collaborations, across five Georgian cities, Tbilisi, Gori, Gurjaani, Kutaisi, and Lanchkhuti.

Georgian dance is inseparable from music. Tempo, structure, and emotional intensity shape every movement. Rather than depicting specific choreographies, these murals translate music into visual form. Rhythm becomes posture, sound becomes line, and repetition becomes composition. The works hold contrast, power and restraint, sharp precision and flowing continuity, allowing tradition to remain active rather than fixed.

A Dance Across Georgia 1

In Varketili, Dance by Afzan Pirzade with TMF Studio, brings movement into direct conversation with the city. Inspired by Georgian National Ballet dancers Natia Bakuradze and Lash Kuprashvili, the dance appears suspended between strength and release. The body holds intensity, yet the fabric and posture suggest motion still unfolding. Against the rigid geometry of the building, the mural introduces rhythm where none existed before, and is a beautiful addition to the community.

Dance by Afzan Pirzade with TMF Studio

A Dance Across Georgia 2

In Kutaisi, Afzan Pirzade and TMF Studio continue the Dance series with a work rooted in Georgia’s ancient ritual traditions. Drawing on Samaya, a pagan-era women’s dance dedicated to the moon and fertility, the mural depicts three interwoven figures, their bodies merging into a single, rhythmic presence. Performed historically by all genders during the festival of Dzeoba, the mural feels both ceremonial and grounded, a reminder of how movement once connected bodies, seasons, and belief.

Samaya by Afzan Pirzade with TMF Studio

A Dance Across Georgia 3

In Gurjaani, TMF Studio references the Sukhishvili National Ballet, based on photography by Zura Pirtskhalava. Rendering the dancer in restrained monochrome, the dancer appears almost sculptural, poised between stillness and motion, her body carrying the discipline and restraint of a centuries-old tradition, and a reminder of how Georgian dance carries strength, memory, and control beneath its elegance.

TMF Studio references the Sukhishvili National Ballet

A Dance Across Georgia 4

In Lanchkhuti, a town encountering street art for the first time, TMF Studio and Irakli Kadeishvili present the dancer, Tornike Paikidze, captured mid-spin. Thhe mural introduces a new kind of energy, marking a fun shift in how movement, tradition, and place begin to meet.

TMF Studio and Irakli Kadeishvili 

A Dance Across Georgia 5

In Gori, TMF Studio presents Simdi, drawn from a Sukhishvili Ballet photograph of dancer Aura Pirtskhalava. The dancer stands poised and self-contained, painted in warm, earthen tones, the mural carries the discipline and dignity of the traditional dance, allowing movement to settle into stillness.

In Gori, Simdi presents a figure defined by control and dignity.

Created collectively by TMF Studio in collaboration with Irakli Kadeishvili, Afzan Pirzade, Salome Merabishvili, and Besik Maziashvili, the ‘Dance series’ mirrors the shared passion of Georgian dance and polyphonic music itself. Here, dance leaves the theatre and enters the street, continuing to move with the city.

Place, Tradition, and Everyday Ritual

Beyond Tbilisi, the festival’s expansion allowed murals to speak directly to local identity. In Gurjaani, in Georgia’s Kakheti wine region, TMF Studio’s grape-harvest mural honours domestic winemaking traditions passed quietly from generation to generation. The mural speaks less about production than about care, about harvest, patience, and the knowledge that culture is often held, quite literally, in their hands.

TMF Studio’s grape-harvest mural 

Nearby, Autumn Tale by TMF Studio settles into the town like a seasonal shift. A young figure emerges from layers of patterned fabric, framed by falling leaves and the suggestion of movement behind her. The mural feels rooted in transition, between summer and winter, tradition and change.

Autumn Tale by TMF Studio

Memory, Displacement, and Belonging

As in previous years, Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025 addressed Georgia’s occupied regions and the realities of displacement. A mural by Afzan Pirzade and Besik Maziashvili bearing the message “Abkhazia is Georgia” was created on a residential building housing internally displaced people. The work does not soften its statement. It stands as a public act of memory, insisting on visibility where erasure threatens to settle in.

Afzan Pirzade and Besik Maziashvili bearing the message “Abkhazia is Georgia” 

A Mother’s Love at Monumental Scale

In Mother and Child, a collaboration between Afzan Pirzade and Besik Maziashvili, a classical composition unfolds quietly within the city. A mother cradles her child, rendered in muted tones that resist drama. Placed amid daily movement, the mural reflects how care and special bonds quietly persist across generations.

Mother and Child, a collaboration between Afzan Pirzade and Besik Maziashvili

When Walls Become Stage at Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025

Tbilisi Mural Fest 2025 allowed walls across Georgia to become stages, witnesses, and quiet archives… holding care, movement, memory, and pause. Artists from Australia, Italy, Serbia, India, and Ukraine, including Fintan Magee, Edoardo Ettorre, Artez, Afzan Pirzade, and SkV.art, worked alongside Georgian artists Besik Maziashvili, Davit Samkharadze, Irakli Kadeishvili, Nanina Andguladze, and Salome Merabishvili.

TMF Studio & Afzan Pizade (Tbilisi) 

SKV.art (Tbilisi) 

 Irakli Qadeishvili.(Kutaisi)

Together, the invited artists murals formed a conversation that moved across cities rather than centring on one. Through the continued vision of Besik Maziashvili, the Tbilisi Mural Fest remains internationally engaged while staying attentive to place… allowing Georgia’s streets to speak in their own rhythm.

Image copyright Besik Maziashvili, TMF-STUDIO.