Interview with: Nanuka Darsalia
March 2026
Welcome Nanuka Darsalia, first tell us about your background and why you chose to pursue this career. Do you remember the first artwork that stirred something inside you?
From a young age, drawing became my way of thinking, feeling, and processing the world, a way to slow down and notice what might otherwise pass unseen. When the moment came to choose a path, art felt closest to my nature, so I followed it. As for a single artwork that stirred something in me —I find it hard to point to one. I've always tried to approach things with fresh eyes, even the familiar. Inspiration, for me, has never come from a single decisive encounter. Many works have moved me deeply, but becoming an artist was a slower, quieter process, one of looking, reflecting, and gradually understanding that this is simply how I engage with the world.
How do you reconcile the tension between raw, innate creativity and the discipline required to master your craft?
Art is a “jealous” path. If you betray it, neglect it, or forget it — it will find a way to ruin you. You have to truly love what you do, with all its tensions and crises included. For me, discipline and raw creativity are not opposites. Discipline is what you need in the beginning — to build the foundation, to learn the craft, to earn the freedom. But once that foundation is laid, creativity stops feeling like something you have to force. It becomes the most natural thing. The discipline was never there to tame the creativity. It was there to set it free.
Your practice also embraces painting. Over the decades, there has been talk multiple times about the supposed death of painting, which in fact there never was. How do you see the future and development of this medium?
The "death of painting" has always struck me as a strange statement. It has been declared dead many times throughout history, yet it keeps reinventing itself, adapting to each new generation. For me, painting remains uniquely direct and intimate. Its physical presence through gesture, color, and material is difficult to replicate, and as long as human passion exists, it never truly will. Its strength lies in its openness ,able to absorb influences from other disciplines while maintaining its own character. I see its future not as the continuation of a fixed tradition, but as an evolving conversation. Each generation reinterprets what painting can be, and in doing so, the medium keeps moving forward.
How important is it for viewers to understand the intended message of your work? Does ambiguity add value, or do you seek clarity in your expression?
I don't expect viewers to fully "understand" my work. What I hope is that they feel it — even if that feeling is fragmented or slightly uneasy. Ambiguity matters to me because it creates space for personal interpretation. Rather than offering fixed explanations, I want people to enter the work through their own memories and associations. This is particularly present in my series Inherited Dreams, where I explore memories that are not entirely our own — inherited, intuitive, almost subconscious. The goal is not to provide answers, but to create a space where personal and ancestral memory can coexist, where emotions are sensed rather than explained, and where the invisible threads connecting us across time might quietly reveal themselves.
Do you feel a personal connection to your subject matter is essential? How has this connection shaped your work?
Yes, in my opinion it is essential, but not necessarily mandatory. Every artist follows a different path, yet I believe that every artistic decision begins with a certain inspiration or passion. That impulse is something very natural. It is part of being human and exists in every field of creativity. In my own practice, this connection sometimes appears in unexpected ways. There are moments when my hand guides the brush and my mind enters a kind of flow state. In those moments, the process becomes intuitive rather than calculated. I think it is important to allow yourself that freedom, to create without overthinking, even to draw or paint things that might initially feel “unserious.” Often, those spontaneous gestures become the starting point for something more meaningful. They can reveal ideas, forms, or emotions that I later choose to explore more deeply in my work. In that sense, the artist can also become their own source of inspiration, discovering new directions through the act of making itself.
Artificial Intelligence is increasingly infiltrating creative fields. Do you see Artificial Intelligence as a threat, a tool, or a collaborator in the art world?
I see Artificial Intelligence primarily as a tool. Like technologies before it, its value depends entirely on how it is used and the intentions behind it. It can open interesting possibilities for experimentation, but it cannot replace the human experience at the core of artistic creation. For me, art is deeply connected to emotion, memory, and personal perception — things that come from lived experience, which technology cannot truly replicate. AI may assist in certain processes, but the meaning and sensitivity behind a work will always come from the artist themselves. So I don't see it as a threat, but as a new element artists can choose to engage with or not, depending on their practice. What remains essential is the authenticity of the human voice behind the work.
We are at the end of this short interview, would you like to add something about your artistic research? How did you find the collaboration with our gallery?
My artistic research began with a very personal question: what could be so universal that even the most radically different person from you might recognize it? After much reflection, the answer turned out to be surprisingly simple — ancestry. No matter how different we are, we all carry something inherited. I began noticing that we sometimes feel or experience things we never lived through ourselves. Almost intuitively. That observation became the foundation of Inherited Dreams — an exploration of the invisible continuum of consciousness passed down through generations. Fragments of memory, fear, desire, and intuition that lead the individual and resurface in new forms. Each painting attempts to become a portal between the personal and the inherited, between the self and something much older. The series is guided by a few questions I keep returning to: What do we remember that we have never experienced? How are the emotions of our ancestors transformed in us? Can painting restore what language has lost over generations? My biggest challenge was giving shape to something fundamentally immaterial,that quiet inheritance that lives in us without a name. I found grounding in Carl Jung's analytical psychology, Marianne Hirsch's theory of postmemory, and ideas drawn from mysticism and animism — the notion that memories can inhabit material things, that paint itself can become a vessel. I wanted to share this work beyond my immediate circle and reach a wider audience. That desire led me to collaborate with Florence Contemporary, and I am grateful for the space and trust they have offered.