When adults make decisions, they should think about how their decisions will affect children. All adults should do what is best for children. Governments should make sure children are protected and looked after by their parents, or by other people when this is needed. Governments should make sure that people and places responsible for looking after children are doing a good job. – United Nations, Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Version), 2019.
This publication is a monograph by Tolia Astakhishvili, a Georgian artist based in Berlin and Tbilisi. Published by Editions Empire, it accompanies her exhibition of the same name at mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) in Austria. The volume focuses on the drawings at the core of the artist’s practice and their materiality.
Astakhishvili is renowned for her installations, which layer temporary walls, everyday objects, and traces of the past into existing architectural spaces such as galleries. Within this book, she translates her spatial approach into the structure of a publication by employing the processes of accumulation and overprinting on paper. The plates are printed on several different paper stocks and held together by a unique binding, in which a slightly oversized, thick cover is saddle-stitched with staples alongside the main text block. It is a volume where the artist's multi-layered exhibition spaces unfold as printed matter. The design is by the Paris-based design studio, syndicat.
Edited by Tolia Astakhishvili, Fatima Hellberg, Manuela Ammer With contributions by Kirsty Bell, Fatima Hellberg, and Liesl Ujvary.
- 184 pages Size: 235 x 325 mm Color, black and white Hardcover
Published by Empire, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK), 2026
