Ravel/Unravel: Hidden Process

Artisterium 10

Georgian National Museum

Tbilisi History Museum “Karvasla”

8 Sioni str, Tbilisi

Exhibition Dates: November 4— November 14, 2017

AZIZ + CUCHER, USA Some People, 2014, Cotton and Wool Jacquard Tapestry, 182cm x 309 cm Courtesy of Gazelli Art House, London and Magnolia Editions, Oakland, CA (USA)

Co-curated by Lydia Matthews, Chuka Kuprava and Mariam Shergelashvili, “Ravel/Unravel: Hidden Process” is featured within Artisterium 10, an international exhibition in the Georgian National Museum Karvasla in Tbilisi. Featuring the work of Aziz + Cucher, Jen Bervin, Elana Herzog, and Adonis Volanakis, the exhibition addresses the dynamic and intimate relationship between words, textile fibers and the human body. The artists’ projects are set in dialogue with objects and images from Tbilisi’s State Silk Museum, a 19th century “wunderkammer” that once functioned as an active scientific center for silk research during the Soviet era. The installation as a whole investigates how personal stories, new and old technologies and textile histories are intimately intertwined, taken apart and then re-envisioned to produce new meanings. Fusing fiber materials with immaterial memories, visual patterns, sound, performance and poetry, these artists’ creative processes demonstrate why haptic, multi-sensory and “embodied” forms of knowledge are essential to re-humanizing an otherwise speed-obsessed, screen-dominated and increasingly dangerous nationalistic age. The exhibition was complemented by two workshops: one dedicated to translating Jen Bervin’s “Silk Poem” into Georgian (resulting in a poetry chapbook designed by Arpi Adamyan) and a storytelling/image-making workshop with rural craftswomen from the region.

This exhibition features our faculty members Lydia Matthews, Anthony Aziz, Sammy Cucher, and our current student Arpi Adamyan.

See more here.