Opening, November 26, 2024, 6 pm
Exhibition, November 27, 2024 – January 9, 2025
To the east of the Black Sea and south of the Greater Caucasus, Georgia shares a border with Russia in the north, Turkey and Armenia in the south, and Azerbaijan in the east. The parts of the country known as Abkhazia and South Ossetia have been occupied by Russian forces for more than two decades. The war in Ukraine is very close: not least because tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and Russian migrants have arrived in the country, which has a population of only 3.7 million, since the outbreak of the war. While the Georgian government is trying to align the country with Russia, many young Georgians, in particular, see their future as part of Europe in a democratic European Union.
In this situation marked by uncertainty and instability, Salome Dumbadze, Ana Gzirishvili, and Nina Kintsurashvili have been cultivating an intensively research-based and experimental artistic practice. In their collaborative works, the collective focuses on the gendered cultural heritage in the Caucasus and post-Soviet and post-colonial Georgian society. Sharing resources and mutual theoretical exchanges are as intrinsic to their artistic engagement as documenting contemporary social phenomena that do not conform to official Georgian politics. A particular focus is devoted to the region’s material cultural heritage both as a trace of different ethnic communities and as a crystallization point for ongoing conflicts.
As no independent historiography has been able to establish itself in post-Soviet Georgia, and national “history” in this country is literally written along the lines of church construction or rededication, it is only logical for the three artists to take a church as the departure point for their engagement with the material traditions of the Caucasus in their first joint exhibition outside Georgia—specifically, the ruin of the Karmir Avetaran Church in the heart of Tbilisi. The beginnings of this Armenian church date back to the eighteenth century, when Armenians were sought after as workers and tradespeople. For example, in a collection of Georgian draft laws during the reign of King Heraclius II, it says: “All those who come from foreign lands shall be honored and supported by us and our loyal judges, officials, and others in such a way that henceforth more people from foreign lands will be tempted to seek our protection.”
The proactive efforts to attract migrants, who played a major role in Tbilisi’s economic and cultural upswing in the eighteenth century, also included the recognition of their religious and cultural identity. As one such example, the Armenian community founded the Karmir Avetaran Church, which would be extended, remodeled, and renovated over the course of two centuries. During the Soviet era, it was used by various organizations. The Armenian community repeatedly approached the municipal authorities with requests to carry out reinforcement work on the church at their own expense, but to no avail. In April 1989, the dome collapsed after a massive earthquake. Since then, the condition of the church has deteriorated significantly, while the district in the immediate vicinity has undergone a rapid gentrification process in recent years, fueled by tourism. Representatives of the Armenian community perceive this as a sustained policy of neglect, if not an outright Georgization and/or destruction of Armenian historical and cultural sites in Georgia.
Salome Dumbadze, Ana Gzirishvili, and Nina Kintsurashvili take the complex history of this abandoned and forgotten church as an impulse to ask how such an influential cultural heritage in the center of the city can fall victim to ongoing ethnic and religious conflicts: “What happens when something intended to serve as a monumental marker of a cultural trail is deliberately subjected to decay and disappearance due to negligence and ethnic disputes? How can buildings become immigrants—not fully having claimed the land they have been built on and at the mercy of changing political agendas?”
Ana Gzirishvili employs an old craft technique to mold empty models of the church out of wet leather. Once dry, an organic shell of the building remains. Flexible and easy to transport, the miniature structures scattered in the exhibition space resemble shed snake skins or mussel shells. The architectural features of the building can only be vaguely deciphered. What these hollow leather forms bear witness to goes deeper: they are a testimony to what was—a vibrant Armenian community in a Georgian city—and to the loss of this multi-ethnic coexistence.
Nina Kintsurashvili’s pictorial investigation begins with a small surviving detail of a painted decoration on the northern wall of the church: using color paints, she creates repetitions of these traditional forms and then prints monotypes on mulberry paper. Made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree, its long fibers lend the paper a high degree of durability. By repeating and thus modifying the traditional pattern, Kintsurashvili continues a work in the present time that for centuries was reserved for (male) church decorators. Using a printing process to extract the forms, she also points out that reconstructions such as those performed by restorers fall short in the case of the Karmir Avetaran Church: what is needed here is an awareness of what is at risk to disappear irretrievably.
Salome Dumbadze, in turn, makes moving sculptures from artifacts of contemporary consumer culture. A windshield wiper mechanism sets a painting, a flag, or readymade objects found on site in motion. In contrast to the customary practice in cultural history museums to conserve and thus charge the exhibits with a more universal meaning, these objects are put into a state of movement that suspends their autonomous, self-referential status. Dumbadze’s assemblages become metaphors for contemporary material culture in the Caucasus, which is characterized by fungible consumer goods with a narrow lifespan and the glorification of national and religious monuments.
In their research on the Karmir Avetaran Church and artistic explorations building upon the surviving material heritage, the three artists highlight the conditions that enable migrants to arrive in a new social context while preserving their cultural autonomy. Their specific focus is the precarious status of the Armenian community in Georgian majority society—their “host”—even after centuries of co-existence in the country. With the Expelled Grounds exhibition, they do not symbolically appropriate the voices or artifacts of the Armenian church community. Rather, they ensure that a cultural heritage that has been driven to the brink of disappearance remains present in its absence. They are the hosts of a cultural void and witnesses to how even the historical solid ground of Armenian life in the heart of Tbilisi can crumble and a building becomes migrant.
Salome Dumbadze სალომე დუმბაძე | www.instagram.com/sa_lomka
Ana Gzirishvili ანა გზირიშვილი | www.anagzirishvili.com
Nina Kintsurashvili ნინა კინწურაშვილი |
www.ninakintsurashvili.com
(All b. 1992 in Tbilisi, Georgia)
