BIO
Lizi Budagashvili (b. 2000) is an artist born and raised in Tbilisi, Georgia, where she is currently based. She earned her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2025 and her BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2023. She has held solo exhibitions internationally, including Kaleidoscope at Wohlleb Gallery in Vienna and Fireflies at Vernissage Gallery in Tbilisi. Budagashvili is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2019, 2020).
Having spent seven years in the United States before recently relocating from New York to Tbilisi, Georgia, her work is deeply informed by themes of displacement and memory.
Artist statement
Exploring themes of childhood, memories, and nostalgia, my paintings capture the longing for simpler times by delving into the ephemeral, mirage-like childhood recollections. This approach shapes my artistic process, enabling me to draw dreamscapes from memory gaps and create ethereal atmospheres through transparent veils that reflect memories after multiple layers of removal and interpretation.
By abstracting distant and unreliable recollections, I invite viewers to reflect on a comforting yet very haunting nostalgia rooted not in a tangible place, but in imagined homelands built of memory stains and glimpses.
The parallels between motherland, childhood, and an idealized past in my work are deeply influenced by my leaving home in the country of Georgia at the age of seventeen. This exploration of having multiple 'homes' while struggling to belong takes form through stained surfaces, magical folk creatures, and dreamlike realms that blur the line between distant memories and reality, blending home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life.
education
2023 - 2025 – New York Academy of Art (MFA), New York, New York, USA
2019 – 2023 – Ringling College of Art+Design (BFA) with a minor in , Sarasota, Florida, USA
2017 - 2019 – United World College (IB Program), Dilijan, Armenia
