After exploring the main section of the Arsenale at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice, visitors are confronted by a long series of different pavilions, such as the Georgian one. Featuring an installation by artist Vajiko Chachkhiani, this space proves fascinating for the way the artist combines in it history, psychology and architecture to explore the human condition after traumatic events in Georgia.
Chachkhiani's installation consists in an abandoned wooden house made of brown and greenish boards, with a hint of a faded blue paint on the porch. The structure was transplanted from the Georgian countryside (it was originally located in a village close to the mining town of Chiatura, in the mountains) to Venice, complete with furniture, pictures and a series of assorted objects.
There are traces of a previous existence around the house: probably a woman lived here, there is indeed an invisible feminine touch around it and an attempt at a minimum decorative effort.
The surreal thing about the house is that (thanks to an irrigation system installed on the roof), it rains continuously inside the house. Heavy drops of water keep on falling without interruption on the scattered pieces of furniture, on the narrow bed, the rickety chairs and the tables.
You can not access the house, you can just stare at it from the outside, or spy inside it, by lifting a curtain and looking through a broken window. When you do so, you immediately realise that, along the six months of the exhibition, the rain will flood the house, mutating its spaces and contents; objects will disintegrate and moss will grow over them.
Vajiko Chachkhiani, an artist who usually spends a lot of time in the provincial parts of Georgia and in poor villages and who tries to explore and analyse personal experiences via raw materials, conceives the house as a metaphor, a way to explore the interior life of a human being via a physical space. "The interior will change but the exterior will remain the same. Like a traumatic experience changes the interior life of a person," he explains in a press release.
In the installation the artist hints at traumatic historical events, civil wars and difficult economic and financial situations; rains symbolises purification and ablution (the water will wash away the trauma), and the dichotomies between life and death (rain gives life to plants and moss, but also destroys things).
The installation is entitled "Living Dog Among Dead Lions", a quote from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 9:4), referring to people who behave like wild and aggressive lions and who eventually get killed in difficult circumstances, and to introverted and humble individuals, who, thanks to their meekness, manage to stay alive even in harsh living conditions.
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