Casting an Echo: Architecture of Sericulture at Goethe-Institut Georgia

 

Using various research along with artistic and curatorial insights, Casting an Echo: Architecture of Sericulture seeks to create multiple points of access into the archives of the State Silk Museum. The exhibition's starting point is research materials that demonstrate how changes in society and urban design redefine the museum’s place within the urban iconography.

 

In light of the fact that Georgia no longer has a silk industry, researching and studying the country's sericultural past has gained an even greater significance. Photographs presented from the Silk Museum’s recently digitized collections constitute a precious resource through which to explore cultural, economic and social references related to Silk production in the South Caucasus.

Casting an Echo: Architecture of Sericulture has been organized to allow various sections of the show to be rearranged onsite, making space for new assessments, thus questioning how physical engagements with the archives can interrogate, subvert, or open up the material to new forms of association.

 

The Silk Museum has survived thanks to the joint efforts of contemporary textile artists – one of whom, Nino Kuprava, is the current Museum director. As a result, the Silk Museum maintains a unique experimental environment for artistic research and critical inquiry.

 

The artist Olaf Nicolai has responded to an invitation to work in the Silk Museum’s archives and proposed the development of a platform SERI(a) for the institution’s various publishing activities. Italian photographer Giovanna Silva was invited to contribute to the first issue of this publication series and document what was left of the Silk Museum's predecessor—the Caucasian Sericulture Station. At the time of her visit in 2019, the Silk Museum's collections, library, and display cabinets were preserved in their original state, along with the building’s complex structures. These had been a part of one of the first museum-like establishments to be founded in this region. Silva captured the atmosphere and the everyday public function of the Silk Museum building, including eye-catching details of the interior's decorative and architectural motifs inspired by silkworms, moths, and mulberry leaves. Her documentation, made prior to the commencement of the building’s three-year renovation, has become an invaluable archive and point of reference for this exhibition, especially now that some of the museum’s spaces and collections remain partially inaccessible to the public.

Casting an Echo: Architecture of Sericulture is curated by Nina Akhvlediani, with contributions by Olaf Nicolai, Giovanna Silva.

 

The exhibition was organized by Goethe-Institut Georgia, in collaboration with the State Silk Museum, with the support of Goethe-Zentrum Baku.