A guest staying at the Stamba Hotel in Tbilisi has painted over a painting about the war in Abkhazia by the Georgian artist Lia Shvelidze, later justifying the decision as a form of ‘dialogue with Georgian art’.
The guest, identified on social media as an artist named Lola Beebs, posted photos and video on Instagram showing the repainting of the work on display in a bedroom in the hotel in December 2025 and March 2026, with the exact date of her visit being unknown. The incident began circulating among Georgian social media users only in recent days.
‘This is a shocking fact!’ wrote Mariam Shergelashvili, an exhibition curator and cultural manager, in a Monday social media post, attaching a screenshot from Lola Beebs’ now-locked Instagram profile showing the largely repainted artwork.
The Threads and Pinterest accounts, where the Stamba guest also published pictures of the drawing, are still open.
The artwork, titled Patriots Are at War — with the same text on it in red Georgian letters — was created by Shvelidze in 1995, dedicating to the war in Abkhazia. In a short phone interview with OC Media, the artist described the incident as a ‘crime and an act of vandalism’.
According to Shvelidze, an investigation into the matter has been opened. However, since she no longer owns the work, the artist does not have information about the details of the process.
The individual responsible for the repainting has not yet responded to OC Media’s questions regarding her motivations or the hotel administration’s reaction.
However, multimedia artist and curator Gvantsa Jishkariani posted on social media what appear to be screenshots of Instagram correspondence with Lola Beebs. In the conversation, the individual introduced herself as a ‘Kazakh artist of Chechen roots’ and stated that ‘the situation is already being handled directly with the hotel in a respectful and reasonable way’.
‘I'm already in contact with the hotel and taking all responsibility’, she said.
She further claims that she had not intended to disrespect the Georgian artist, claiming lack of knowledge of what was written on the artwork and adding that she began ‘working’ on it ‘intuitively, just feeling something in it’.
‘Only later I understood the meaning connected to war — and that’s exactly why I didn’t erase anything. The text, the figures, the structure — all of it is still there’, she said, adding that the action was about ‘gently shifting’ the memory, ‘from distance and sadness into something more human and connected’.
‘The floral elements were inspired by Georgian artist Merab Abramishvili, so in a way it became a dialogue with Georgian art, not against it’, the text read.
Lola Beebs also explained that she does ‘this kind of work’ in ‘different hotels around the world’ and that it was part of her ‘conception’.
OC Media has contacted both the Adjara Group, which owns the hotel, and the Interior Ministry for comment on the incident. At the time of publication, neither had commented.
