Tamuna was born in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia, on the 12th of February 1971, daughter of Vakthang Sirbildadze and Nunu Ghurchumelia. She started her life together with her elder sister Keti. Already in nursery-school in Lermontow Street, she loved drawing and painting, and impressed her teacher so much that she organized an exhibition for the six year old.
From 1989 to 1994 she studied at the State Academy of Art in Tbilisi, where she gained a degree. After moving to Vienna in 1997, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts until 2003, where her teacher was Franz Graf. In 2003, she further extended her studies at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London.
In the meantime she had met the artist Franz West, whom she married in 2002, and with whom she collaborated on several art-projects and works until his death 2012. Her children Lazare and Emily were born in 2008 and 2009. Her last years she lived together with Benedikt Ledebur.
Always very active, she was included in a group exhibition as soon as she moved to Vienna. Over the years she made a huge body of works encompassing installative works, videos, site-specific projects and an enormous amount of paintings, which she exhibited in various exhibitions in galleries and museums all over Europe. For instance in 2001: Plakatentwürfe with Gisela Capitain in Cologne (cooperating with Franz West), in 2007: Inconcurrence with Collet Park Gallery in Paris, in 2008: Painting and Elements with Jonathan Viner in London, and in 2010: Laszive Lockungen with Charim Unger in Berlin. She participated in the group show: Artists and Poets at the Secession in Vienna, curated by the artist Ugo Rondinone, and in the group show No Man’s Land of the Rubell family collection in Miami, but also had a lot of critical acclaim for two solo-shows in New York: Take it easy in Bill Powers’ Half Gallery and "Good enough" is never good enough in James Fuentes’ Gallery. Her show at Almine Rech gallery in Brussels opened shortly before her death.
A retrospective exhibition of her body of work "Not Cool but Compelling" is on view at the Belvedere 21 in Vienna (22.3. - 11.8.2024).