EZO FESTIVAL
Ezo is an open-air electronic music festival that began as a Mzesumzira project and outgrew it, becoming its own organisation entirely. It was one of the first outdoor dance music festivals in Tbilisi, and it grew into one of the top house music destinations in Europe.
Ezo festival ran as a season rather than a single event. From May to September we built and operated a permanent site, five parties a season, each lasting 48+ hours. We built the site by hand with artists and volunteers, grew gardens, rescued and looked after stray animals, and hosted industry talks, educational programmes, fairs and food courts.
The space and parties were unmatched. Legendary artists who could play anywhere kept asking to come back season after season. Ezo became a date international acts wanted on their calendar.
In 2025 the government shut the permanent site down, and ten years of what we had built had to be torn down by the people who built it. In 2026 the festival came back for a single 48-hour party at a new test location. It starts again from there.
PRESS:
Mixmag
Trommel
Resident Advisor
ezofestival
Photos: Mariam Giunashvili; Maro Merkviladze; Tornike Shengelia; Ketio
LUMOS WELLNESS STUDIO
(Yes, the name is Lumos. I KNOW! Terribly millennial thing to do, but you have to understand, times
were different. (I promise I’m not weird about it 🏳️⚧️))
We founded it out of real necessity. We needed a place to heal, together! Lumos became a light in our hearts, after quite a tunnel.
Yoga was still niche in Georgia then. Most studios focused on the practice itself. Classes began and ended on the mat. And the category carried a heavy, overly spiritual image that intimidated anyone new to it.
We wanted to challenge what a yoga studio could be and create a more social approach to wellness.
So we built a studio and café where people could practise, eat, work, meet and stay. We filled it with workshops, retreats, hikes and different healing practices for the body, mind and spirit.
We managed to create the coziest space, where people felt at ease, safe and cared for. Lumos became a lifestyle brand.
We founded it out of real necessity. We needed a place to heal, together! Lumos became a light in our hearts, after quite a tunnel.
Yoga was still niche in Georgia then. Most studios focused on the practice itself. Classes began and ended on the mat. And the category carried a heavy, overly spiritual image that intimidated anyone new to it.
We wanted to challenge what a yoga studio could be and create a more social approach to wellness.
So we built a studio and café where people could practise, eat, work, meet and stay. We filled it with workshops, retreats, hikes and different healing practices for the body, mind and spirit.
We managed to create the coziest space, where people felt at ease, safe and cared for. Lumos became a lifestyle brand.
There were three of us, each with our own role. I was responsible for the overall brand vision and the world around it. This wasn’t just strategy written in a document. I developed the visual identity across the physical space and online, shaped the tone of voice, customer hospitality approach and turned the overall brand into something people actually gave a *you know what*.
More than 50,000 people followed us. Classes filled. We opened a second location within two years. A few years in, the marketers' report named us a best practice in community building. The community keeps meeting and organising things on their own, well beyond the studio.
https://www.lumos.ge/en
Photos: Mariam Eba
MZESUMZIRA EVENTS
Mzesumzira is an event series and house record label I co-founded in Tbilisi. We built it on production: house music, visual art, and shows designed to be seen as much as heard, at a time when nobody in the city's underground was working that way.
The clubbing industry took itself extremely seriously, but we identified as entertainers, and we understood the audience brief. Nothing else in that market was positioned anywhere near it.
We took over the clubs and venues that already existed and transformed each one into something completely different for a single night, so people walked in awe and excitement.
It moved fast. Every show had resonance, the community built itself with ease, and the events travelled out of Georgia and across Europe, including Berlin rooms like Sisyphos and Club der Visionaere. Mzesumzira became a love brand for a generation of young Georgians.
https://mzesumzira.com/en/
Artworks: Gio Kvlividze
ANIMAL PROJECT — NON-PROFIT
Animal Project is one of the most personal projects in my portfolio. It began during lockdown, when Georgia’s street animals suddenly lost the informal support systems they depended on.
A few of us started a crowdfunded Facebook group called Leftovers with one goal: no animal should go hungry during lockdown. Within weeks, it grew into a countrywide volunteer network coordinating food, medicine, neighbourhood routes and urgent veterinary care.
As a founding member, I worked across community building, fundraising and creative direction. We eventually turned the emergency response into an animal welfare NGO and expanded into rescue, adoption, spay-and-neuter programmes, street shelters, awareness campaigns and brand collaborations.
The project distributed 70 tonnes of food, funded more than 2,000 spay surgeries, treated over 1,000 animals, rescued or rehomed more than 500 and installed over 200 street shelters. Our work reached 2.6 million people through social media.
A few of us started a crowdfunded Facebook group called Leftovers with one goal: no animal should go hungry during lockdown. Within weeks, it grew into a countrywide volunteer network coordinating food, medicine, neighbourhood routes and urgent veterinary care.
As a founding member, I worked across community building, fundraising and creative direction. We eventually turned the emergency response into an animal welfare NGO and expanded into rescue, adoption, spay-and-neuter programmes, street shelters, awareness campaigns and brand collaborations.
The project distributed 70 tonnes of food, funded more than 2,000 spay surgeries, treated over 1,000 animals, rescued or rehomed more than 500 and installed over 200 street shelters. Our work reached 2.6 million people through social media.
https://animalproject.ge/