Local instinct, global mischief
- Ulla, Luka and Nika transform waste into unique, playful furniture
- They honour tradition and preserve forestry by sourcing locally
- Each of their objects carries a fable with its own personality
Trained in architecture but driven by instinct, Nika Gabiskiria, Luka Abashidze and Ulla Alla craft one-off furniture pieces that feel alive, clever, feral and never quite still. From their atelier Garbage Kids, a Georgian-Estonian collective, they turn what the world tosses away into objects that look like folklore but have a humorous appeal. Storm-felled branches, invasive trees, leftover tiles and even shadows constitute their raw materials. Their fuzzy-legged chairs twitch, their crocodile stools grin and even their backgammon boards watch. Each of Nika, Luka and Ulla’s works is a protest, a story and a dare. “We do not decorate space, we haunt it,” the trio says. Regulars on the international scene, they build with humour, memory and materials nobody else wanted. “The more you look, the more our objects reveal,” they explain.
Interview
- Why do you work with discarded materials?
- We work with discarded materials to respect our habitat and scarce resources, and honour tradition by sourcing locally. Through our choices, we avoid supporting destructive, barely regulated forestry to preserve the stories and traceability of each piece and offer more diversity than the global market.
- How would you define your craft?
- It is an interplay of the vernacular and contemporary – where tradition meets familiarity, then swerves into playful novelty. Meticulous, obsessive craftsmanship shapes each piece into part-protest, part-sculpture, part-furniture and part-storytelling.
- Why did you choose to work with furniture?
- Furniture’s universal familiarity holds centuries of shared memory. We twist that heritage through history, chance and our own paths by creating forms that surprise people. Our pieces would not exist without each of our individual, distinct experiences.
- What inspires your aesthetic?
- Historic pagan, religious, and ritualistic art draw us into worlds of myth and fable. We translate these qualities into a modern visual language, making each object a small fable with its own character, voice and agenda.
Nika Gabiskiria, Ulla Alla & Luka Abashidze are rising stars: they began their career in 2020
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Nika Gabiskiria, Ulla Alla & Luka Abashidze
