Tbilisi oriental exhibition focuses on 19th Century imperial politics

Cultural influences on Georgia stemming from a 19^th Century rivalry between the British and Russian Empires is the focus on an exhibition opening tomorrow at Georgia’s State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts in capital Tbilisi.

The exhibition titled East-West Divan: Mushtaidi Palace Decorations will illustrate effects of the strategic confrontation known as The Great Game on Georgia, caused by the importance of the country’s geopolitical location in the competition between the two great empires for influence in Central Asia.

An Iranian palace décor was selected as a key piece of the exhibition. Photo from Georgian State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts.

Organisers of the event will use portraits of the 19^th Century political figures involved in the imperial rivalry as well as items of decorative and applied arts that showed the oriental influence on artistic creations in Georgia at the time.

A key exhibit of the event will be the palace décor of Iranian spiritual leader Agha Mir Fattah Mujtahid (1794-1852).

The exhibition objects have been selected from collections of the State Museum of Folk and Applied Arts and the Georgian National Museum, while the event itself has been organised as part of a joint project by Georgia’s Ilia State University Institute of Oriental Studies and the United Kingdom’s University of Cambridge Pembroke Iranian Studies Centre.

The expo will continue for two and a half months at the Folk and Applied Arts Museum, located on Dadiani St in Tbilisi.