Whose City? Street Art and the Performance of Belonging in Tbilisi, Georgia

Join us in the Vandenberg Room (2nd floor) at the Michigan League for a presentation by Greta Uehling, a 2025-26 Faculty Fellow with the Center for World Performance Studies (CWPS).

Street art is often understood as a form of cultural resistance in politically constrained societies like Georgia. Professor Greta Uehling will draw on ethnographic fieldwork in Tbilisi, including interviews with artists, activists, and viewers supported to explore the forces that complicate its communicative potential. Uehling extends a Barthian approach that foregrounds the reception of street art and the contested meanings that emerge around it. In this talk, she will explore the state’s appropriation of street-art aesthetics through government-sponsored projects, as well as private citizens’ power to veto murals on their buildings. She will then turn to gender as a contested terrain where Georgia’s European aspirations meet enduring social norms. This research was supported by a Faculty Fellowship from the Center for World Performance Studies.

Presented by the Center for World Performance Studies with support from the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

FACULTY BIO

https://ii.umich.edu/ii/people/all/u/uehling.html

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact the Center for World Performance Studies at cwps.information@umich.edu at least one week in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.