Artist Tamuna Chabashvili's work examines families missing relatives
Chabashvili uses a structure of a "sound tree" to bring the process of families affected by the suffering of missing loved ones to the visual form of the display. Image via display website.
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A recently launched contemporary digital exhibition, launched by International Committee of the Red Cross and involving collaboration with artist Tamuna Chabashvili, explores experiences and feelings of people whose relatives and loved ones have gone missing, through their memories and reflections.
Launched to mark International Day of the Disappeared, Missing Monument brings together words and visuals dealing with elements of the experience like the past, the waiting and the hopefulness on the part of the families.
Designed as a "space of reflection" around the process of missing - from commemoration to lack of closure - the display is seen as a tribute to families across the world that face the void left by disappearances.
Like a chorus in Greek tragedy, the sound tree provides the atmosphere and brings together different voices, creating a shared space for the missing persons" - project summary
The project uses interviews and other source material by families who have seen their loved ones go missing in armed conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions in the 1990s and in 2008, to construct a "sound tree" of their experiences.
Even though the material used by Chabashvili for the display comes from people affected by specific historical events, the overall concept of Missing Monument is created to address the process of prolonged suffering felt by all families and individuals who have found themselves in the predicament around the world.
This pain has no land, no nationality, and no one's pain is greater than someone else's. In the words of a mother of a missing son, 'Grief has no nationality. We live under a common sky; our pain is the same.'" - project summary
Beside marking the international date for the disappeared, the online display aims to bring public attention to the issue, and represent a tribute to those going through grief, sadness, reflection and other experiences tied to their memories of the missing relatives.
It comes from Chabashvili, an Amsterdam- and Tbilisi-based artist whose practice revolves around subjects of archive and traces through "mapping private stories and memories into visual and tactile narratives".
She has worked on exhibitions including The Corridors of Conflict. Abkhazia 1989-1995 (2019), The Fabric of the Everyday Life (2017) and Supra of Her Own (2014). The former project brought never-before-seen video and audio interviews, photographs, newspaper articles and other exhibits to Tbilisi's Literature Museum to bring new light to the history of the 1990s conflict in the province.
Last year Chabashvili was shortlisted for the inaugural Zygmunt Waliszewski Visual Arts Award in Georgia, with the prize aiming to distinguish contemporary creatives of the local scene and mark the legacy of Georgian-Polish cultural relations. She is also co-founder of the international project Public Space With a Roof.