MUNTHE ART MONDAY: IRINKA TALAKHADZE
Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.
My name is Irinka Talakhadze. I work primarily with painting. My practice explores figures in staged, theatrical spaces.moments that feel suspended between rehearsal and performance. I am interested in vulnerability, control, and the quiet tension carried by the body through posture, fabric, and gesture.
I work with a restrained, warm palette and build images slowly through layering. The figures I paint are not portraits but vessels, existing between presence and absence. Painting, for me, is a way of holding time still, creating a space where looking becomes a form of listening.
Irinka is wearing our TAULLA SKIRT and BARAM OUTWEAR.
Can you name some other female (artist) that inspires you and explain why they do so?
Mary Cassatt’s work has stayed with me for its calm intensity. I’m drawn to the way her figures inhabit their own interior worlds, held in moments of closeness and suspension. There is a sense of protection and distance at the same time - intimacy without exposure. Her paintings don’t ask for attention; they hold it. That quiet gravity, where emotion is carried through posture and presence rather than narrative, feels deeply aligned with how I think about painting.
What would you like people to notice in your artwork?
I want people to notice the emotional pressure inside the images. The figures are simplified so feeling can surface without explanation. I’m interested in how anxiety, tenderness, and humor can exist together, held by form rather than narrative. The work is about what is exposed and what is contained at the same time.
Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?
Being a woman has shaped how I move through the world rather than how I define my work. It has taught me to read situations closely, to notice shifts in power, silence, and proximity. Those observations naturally entered my practice, long before I had language for them.
I don’t approach painting as commentary or resistance. I’m interested in states of containment, exposure, and quiet resilience - how the body holds experience without explanation. The work grew from lived awareness rather than position. In that sense, being a woman is present not as a subject, but as a way of seeing.
Irinka is wearing our LIX BAG.
What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?
One of the main challenges has been being taken seriously within systems that favor certain voices and aesthetics. Work that is emotional, figurative, or intuitive can be easily underestimated. Building a sustainable practice often requires persistence and self-trust beyond recognition. At the same time, meaningful support from galleries, peers, and collectors has been essential and grounding.
