Seminar | Artistic Citizenship – When Art Becomes a Civic Voice

Iveri will introduce the concept of artistic citizenship, exploring how artistic practice can become a form of civic engagement and response to political power. Nana Sharikadze will then turn to the Georgian case, examining how artists and cultural institutions navigate political pressure, censorship, and attempts to control cultural life.

Drawing on examples from Georgia and the wider post-Soviet context, the seminar explores how music, theatre, and visual art can become spaces for resistance, historical memory, and the defence of artistic freedom. It also considers the role of artists in times of war, political polarisation, and shrinking democratic space.

Nana Sharikadze is an Associate Professor and Head of the International Research Centre of Georgian Studies at Caucasus University in Tbilisi. Her research focuses on Georgian and Soviet music, music and politics, and questions of colonisation and decolonisation. In 2023, she published An Introduction to Georgian Art Music: Sense-Making Through Music. Her research on Georgian and Ukrainian music and the processes of colonisation and decolonisation has also been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society.

Nana Sharikadze’s visit to Malmö Academy of Music is funded through the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility programme and co-funded by the Sten K. Johnson Foundation.