Anushka Chkheidze

Anushka Chkheidze © Robbrecht de Smet for Monheim Triennale

Anushka Chkheidze (* Kharagauli, Georgia) is based in Utrecht and grew up in the small village of Kharagauli, where she began singing in a choir at the age of 11. She herself describes the time she spent there as magical and believes that her music is strongly influenced by those childhood years. This also led her to create the poetic sound installation “Lost Lullaby” for the orphaned garden of a day-care centre, which she created as part of The Sound, the sound art exhibition of the Monheim Triennale in the summer of 2023.

In January 2019, she released her first tracks on the compilation “Sleepers Poets Scientists” curated by Natalie Beridze, followed by her debut album ‘Halfie’ in April 2020. Her second album “Move 20-21” was recorded during the pandemic and deals with the lack of physical movement and interaction with other people and was released in February 2021. Immediately after her residency in Berlin as part of the Goethe Institute’s talent program for young artists and in collaboration with the Popkultur Festival 2022, she began her two-year Master of Music Design at the HKU in Utrecht/NL.

Anushka Chkheidze continues to work with choirs, which has led to a commission from the Swiss-Georgian festival Close Encounters for the highly regarded Gori Women’s Choir in Georgia in 2021. For over ten years, the festival has brought together young and established musicians from Switzerland and Georgia in both countries.

Last year, she made field recordings as well as piano and choral recordings at the newly renovated Biozentrum research centre at the University of Basel, Switzerland, leading to her forthcoming album “Clean, Clear and White”, which will be released in 2023.

Anushka Chkheidze:
“Childhood is the most fantastic part of life, simply incomparable. Even if you have sad, unpleasant memories, it’s the time that makes you complete and it’s a big part of who you are as a person.”

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