Mari Girkelidze is a Georgian printmaker, illustrator, book designer, and creator of handcrafted artist’s books. She lives and works in Münster, Germany.
From 1997 to 2002, Girkelidze studied at the Faculty of Monumental and Decorative Painting of the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, where her teachers included Nodar Amashukeli and Badri Samsonadze. From 2003 to 2008, she continued her studies at the Department of Design of Münster University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule Münster, Fachbereich Design), specializing in illustration and printmaking, and graduated with the highest distinction. In 2007, she spent an exchange semester at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien).
Girkelidze’s principal field of artistic practice is contemporary printmaking. She works in screen printing, woodcut, etching, lithography, and photogravure. Her work is distinguished by technical experimentation, multilayered compositions, expressive use of colour, and clearly structured graphic forms. Literary and theatrical sources, images of independent women, social and political issues, and the themes of war and climate occupy an important place in her art.
Girkelidze has made a significant contribution to promoting the handcrafted artist’s book in Georgia. In 2010, at the exhibition held at the Georgian Museum of Literature, she presented more than 200 handcrafted and artist’s books brought from Germany.
Her major projects and exhibitions include Triangel, the international printmaking project at Kloster Bentlage; Qvarqvare Tutaberi, created for the Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse, 2018); The Energy of Art (Die Energie der Kunst, 2019); Tartuffe in Georgian—Qvarqvare (Tartuffe auf Georgisch – Kwarkware) at Theater Münster (2021); and Making History at Burg Vischering (2022). In 2015, she and her father, the sculptor Simon Girkelidze, presented the joint exhibition Generations at the Georgian Museum of Literature.
Mari Girkelidze has received scholarships and project funding from German organisations and EUREGIO. Her artworks and artist’s publications are held in the collections of the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, the Georgian Museum of Literature, and cultural institutions in Germany, as well as in private and corporate collections.
