Magic Carpets

“Images fade from the light” - an interactive installation of gilded silver sculptures. The work is the result of traveling and living in the highlands of Adjara. In the villages there, which are home to the largest wooden mosques in Georgia, people have specific beliefs about photos unlike the population from other regions of Georgia.

According to local belief, a dead person suffers in the afterlife if someone looks at his/her image. Therefore, the photos of the dead are burned here, carefully hidden, faces erased, covered with pen, nail polish or even scratched out. In this society, photographs hold little memory: the faces of ancestors remain only in consciousness.

“Images Fade From The Light” - is both an illustration and further understanding of this practice as well as a representation of the culture of image printing in general. The work describes not the visual side of the photograph, but its material side. The work is also adapted to be perceived by the blind and can be touched by hand.

Material: locally gilded silver

Size (each): 7.5x5 cm

Ghorjomi, Khulo. April 2024