Vajiko Chachkhiani with the Public Principle at the Museum of Literature

VAJIKO CHACHKHIANI:

The museum of Literature is hosting a solo exhibition of one of the promising Georgian artists, Vajiko Chachkhiani. Now based in Berlin, Vajiko has presented an artwork Public Principle. Indeed, the exhibited sculptures or the remains of once public monuments cannot be analysed separately, but the unity these fragments create.  Already unlikely for the typical Georgian art, the presentation is unusual too. The exposition itself is not lit so the audience is to observe these objects in natural light creeping into the space, often resulting in half darkness. However, limited vision intensifies the hearing sensors and the walking noises act as soundtracks to the show.

The graveyard for sculpture, as the artist calls it, is a relevant depiction of the Post-Soviet countries, which literary got stuck with thousands of monuments deprived of any symbolical importance. The 90s, when Vajiko was growing up, was filled with the imagery of the sculptures being blown up, taken down or diminished, which probably condensed in the subconscious of the artist.

However, the physical waste of the ideology is just a tip of the iceberg- you can blow up a monument in a day, but you cannot erase the mentality that saw the need for these monuments. The exposition can’t help but make one think of the remains of any kind; things, concepts, contexts and ideology don’t just stop existing, sometimes they just lie around like these firmly clasped hands and vigorous legs- inadequate, helpless, meaningless yet still present.

Nevertheless, it is peculiar that these sculptures became worthy of attention only after being demolished and destroyed. In their previous lives when being the signifiers of squares and the personifications of the father figures for the nation, they were not even considered as art. Chachkhiani on his part puts these remnants into the museum space, elevating their status and true to conceptual art, granting them new meaning/concept. The exhibition plays with other conventions too; the objects were chosen and placed by the ‘ordinary people’ as the press release names them. Vajiko let the non-gallery goers, the ‘non-privileged’ (again from the press release) to participate in the process and become responsible for the exposition. An attempt to raise awareness about art and possibly to democratise it, is so much needed in Georgian reality.