Mind the Map
Mind the Map takes as its subject the famous 19th-century Russian “poet of the Caucasus,” Mikhail Lermontov, who served the Imperial Army during the Caucasian War. Mind the Map reconstructs Northern Georgia’s Darial Gorge, where Lermontov’s poem, “The Demon,” is set, and where today the Georgian Military Road (an ancient invasion route) is crossed by the Caspian gas pipeline. Photographs of the gorge are mounted on poles to resemble picketing signs, accompanied by portraits of myself dressed as Mikhail Lermontov, posed in locations such as the museum of Stalin in Gori and a refugee village.
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Mind the Map. Lermontov’s Memorial Places
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BETWEEN FRAMES
Between Frames is a series of photo-postcards documenting sites of recent political violence. The photographs taken in Moscow in 2011 depict the locations of attacks in the city, the evidence of continuing conflict in the Caucasus. The title relates to the ever futile attempt to take a photograph of a devastating event that disrupted the flow of urban life. Hence, the subject of the photograph never appears in it. It is perpetually outside of the frame. The urban context I place myself in starts speaking – the back of each postcard is detailed with diary-like entries relating my personal interactions in each location, the oppositional ideologies involved in the attacks and controversies over the state’s involvement. A perverse souvenir, the postcard forges a personal connection to sites of tragedies and oscillates between a tourist’s token and ruminations of a flâneur.
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Mind the Map takes as its subject the famous 19th-century Russian “poet of the Caucasus,” Mikhail Lermontov, who served the Imperial Army during the Caucasian War. Mind the Map reconstructs Northern Georgia’s Darial Gorge, where Lermontov’s poem, “The Demon,” is set, and where today the Georgian Military Road (an ancient invasion route) is crossed by the Caspian gas pipeline. Photographs of the gorge are mounted on poles to resemble picketing signs, accompanied by portraits of myself dressed as Mikhail Lermontov, posed in locations such as the museum of Stalin in Gori and a refugee village.
MORE INFO >
Mind the Map. Lermontov’s Memorial Places
MORE INFO >
BETWEEN FRAMES
Between Frames is a series of photo-postcards documenting sites of recent political violence. The photographs taken in Moscow in 2011 depict the locations of attacks in the city, the evidence of continuing conflict in the Caucasus. The title relates to the ever futile attempt to take a photograph of a devastating event that disrupted the flow of urban life. Hence, the subject of the photograph never appears in it. It is perpetually outside of the frame. The urban context I place myself in starts speaking – the back of each postcard is detailed with diary-like entries relating my personal interactions in each location, the oppositional ideologies involved in the attacks and controversies over the state’s involvement. A perverse souvenir, the postcard forges a personal connection to sites of tragedies and oscillates between a tourist’s token and ruminations of a flâneur.
MORE >