On the top floor of Tbilisi’s National Scientific Library, I’m watching models stream into a small atrium flooded with light. In this 1940s building, peppered with wooden filing cabinets, bookcases and tropical plants, they are showcasing the new collection by homegrown designer Gola Damian. They walk out in a fusion of clubwear and vintage, class and trash, cowboy boots and boys with T-shirts tucked into skirts with the words “Techno aerobics” emblazoned across their chests.

The look packs a punch and also feels like an embodiment of what makes Tbilisi so appealing right now: a city having a creative renaissance driven by clubs and fashion, and navigating a new identity for itself in the process.

View of Tbilisi’s Old Town and Narikala Fortress at dusk. Photograph: Frans Sellies/Getty Images

“Fashion and nightlife are blooming in Tbilisi,” says Gola, adding that nightlife in particular has played a “huge role” in drawing more people to the city. This international audience comes because of destination clubs such as Bassiani but find themselves absorbed by the energy of a city – and country – that’s long been overlooked by tourists.

Between Europe and Asia, Georgia is at the intersection of turbulent cultural and historical forces. Though it declared independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the past three decades have seen civil war, as well as geopolitical tensions that have turned violent.

In the past five years, however, Tbilisi’s electronic music scene has flourished, while new galleries, restaurants and creative spaces continue to open. And in a country where, in 2013, an anti-homophobia rally was attacked – and possession of a small amount of recreational drugs can lead to imprisonment – a new generation is pushing for progress on LGBTQ rights and drug laws. Raised in an independent Georgia, that generation is working to define the country’s future, while taking ownership of its past.

Nightlife and LGBTQ



Nia Gvatua in Success Bar. Photograph: Giga Inadze

Nia Gvatua is the owner of the city’s first gay club – and it’s a venue with the most reaffirming name: Success Bar. On a Friday evening, I find her inside the small, louche, red-velvet-walled club wrapped in a furry pink coat. She launches into an embarrassing anecdote about a former lover (who just happens to be standing beside us). The bar has existed since 2000 but when Nia took over and reopened it in March 2017 it burst into life as an open and emboldened social hub for the city’s queer community. This didn’t come easy: “I had a lot of serious problems,” she says. “I got robbed … there were threats against me … but Success has become a portal for every kind of human: trans, gay, straight, lesbians, priests, politicians – all drinking, talking and integrating.”

The city’s club scene has laid down a lot of the groundwork for this growing tolerance. After drinks at Success Bar, I go to Cafe Gallery, which opened in 2011 with a notable commitment to making a safe and welcoming environment for people of all genders and sexualities. With a focus on house-orientated bookings for its club nights – it’s also a cafe and exhibition space during the day – it’s an intimate venue with a strong sense of community. When it comes to nightlife, however, it’s Bassiani (my next stop), that has probably made the biggest impact for Tbilisi.

The club Bassiani has been behind a growth in international visitors to Tbilisi

In the underbelly of the national football stadium, the cavernous club consists of a high-ceilinged main room with an impressive sound system, and a smaller room where house music dominates, plus there are ample corridors and corners to get lost in between the two. The interior fosters a sense of disorientation and it’s a place where time seems to get away from you, easily. It’s also possible to see why it has won over so many international clubbers and DJs – who have noted the enthusiasm of the crowd.

“Georgians like to listen and dance,” DJ and producer Ana Kublashvili (AKA Newa) tells me. “The club scene here feels fresh; people are excited by the idea of it.” Ana is a rising figure in the city’s techno scene. She co-runs the label Icontrax with fellow producer Berika and was recently included on a release by Ben Klock’s Klockworks label, a sign of the international attention the city’s producers are receiving.

“Bassiani was a big step up,” says Ana. “Before it opened, you wouldn’t see a similar lineup in Tbilisi. I also really appreciate what it did, capturing the attention of people outside Georgia.”

Meoba bar

Other clubs on the map include Khidi, an industrial space turned two-room techno club, under a bridge on the river; Mtkvarze, a 1950s building, also by the river, which was turned into a club in 2012; and Vitamin Cubes, an open-air venue next to a lake in a park, which also has a cafe and hosts community events focused around environmentalism. Good bars to warm up a night include Mozaika and Meoba, an atmospheric dive bar with open-decks nights where regulars share their personal record collections.

The clubbing community has also campaigned to liberalise the country’s drug policy through groups such as White Noise. The decriminalisation debate is intertwined with the politics of those involved in Georgia’s cultural development, which explains the anger when young people are jailed for recreational drug offences. “Most of the young people in the clubs are part of the cultural scene,” says Ana. “By creating cultural and entertainment spaces, developing arts and teaching the older generation how to be more tolerant, they do good things for the country.”

Creative ventures

Vodkast Records

Over a beer, Jondo “Jay” Japaridze is telling me how, when he was growing up in the city, looking like a punk could get you into a fight. “It was hard to be alternative,” he says. Though he’s part of the city’s music scene, Jay ended up opening Tbilisi’s first street-style barbershop, Carmora, two years ago. “I never thought I’d open a barbershop,” he says. “But we just wanted to express ourselves through something. The shop is inspired by a mix of vintage, urban and trash.”

Around eight months ago, he opened a second branch in Fabrika, a Soviet-era sewing factory that was converted into a hostel in 2016 and boasts a photogenic, post-industrial courtyard where many of the city’s independent businesses have found a home. “The atmosphere now, it’s good…” says Jay. “You can feel the energy and the movement. There’s a platform for people.”

Chaos Concept Store

Other businesses in Fabrika include Vodkast Records, named in honour of local DJ Gio Bakanidze’s podcast series (he died in 2011 but not before inspiring many more electronic music fans in the city). There are also bars and casual restaurants, such as Pipes, a burger joint founded by graduates of the city’s new culinary academy.

Alternative creative spaces include the Chaos Concept Store (founded in 2016 by a team including Gola Damian), which stocks street fashion brands, as well as collaborations with artists and designers from Georgia. It’s in the same building as Rooms Hotel (doubles from £145 room-only), another focal point for the city’s international creative scene.

Bar area at Rooms Hotels

Underpinning all this are the city’s two fashion weeks, Tbilisi Fashion Week and Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi, with their attendant flamboyance – and events at unconventional spaces across the city. Fashion has drawn a lot of eyes to Tbilisi. As a local artist put it to me: “These Soviet aesthetics are big in fashion and culture and now people are delving deeper; they want to understand where it comes from, and the reason for its existence.”

Art

Despite no seatbelts, two near misses and a prolonged period where our driver shouts aggressively out of the window, 27-year-old artist Gvantsa Jishkariani and I are having a good conversation about Tbilisi’s evolution. “There are more spaces opening,” she says. “Last year there were only two or three galleries showing contemporary art. Now there are four more opening.”

Gvantsa has played an active role in developing the city’s art scene. Three years ago she co-founded the New Collective with a group of female artists. It engages with the social conflicts of independent Georgia and one of its first exhibitions was at the Centre for Contemporary Art, which opened in 2010 and encourages creative exchange within the city. She’s also on the team of the inaugural Tbilisi Art Fair, launching this year (17-20 May).

Works by artist Gvantsa Jishkariani on display in a shipping container at Project Artbeat. Photograph: PR

We stop at one of the newest spaces, Project ArtBeat, where Gvantsa has a work on show alongside other Georgian artists, including Tamuna Chabashvili, who works with traditional patterned tablecloths and explores gender issues specific to the country. Project ArtBeat began as an online gallery and became a mobile gallery in a shipping container that travelled around the country. Last October it found a permanent space in a grand building in the old town.

Next door is the Gamrekeli gallery (another gallery is to open close by soon), while other art spots include Nectar – a small, cube-like space with a big window at the back and a view over the valley – and venues such as Artarea, which hosts contemporary art exhibitions and screenings.

At tiny shops built into one of Tbilisi’s underpasses artists use the Patara gallery/project space to display their work. Here, Georgia ‘Waving’ by Sarah Boulton and Ulijona Odišarija curated by Elene Abashidze

Before I leave, I meet up with Gvantsa again. She wants to show me the new gallery space she’s setting up: a tiny window shop beneath one of Tbilisi’s many underpasses. “I dreamed of having this space,” she says. Now the gallery-cum-project space Patara is giving a rotating cast of artists the chance to create installations that people can stumble on as they navigate the city. The first is local artist and illustrator Anuk Beluga, whose work features a colourful sculpture of a head, hanging from a string under a red strip light; a visual surprise for those who come across the underpass and into its cavern of tiny shops and kitsch nightclubs. It’s small but it feels like another seed planted, albeit in the concrete.

• The trip was supported by the Georgian National Tourist Administration and traveltheunknown.com, which offers small group and tailor-made tours to Georgia, including short stays in Tbilisi