Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum

The Caucasian Sericulture Station was a research institute and educational center of the Caucasus region established in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1887. Its founder, biologist Nikolay Shavorv, created the institution to control the silkworm population and to promote and develop sericulture and apiculture throughout the region. The Caucasian Sericulture Station’s various collections of specimens and books played an important role in the educational activities of the institution and contributed to the public’s awareness of the field. Since its founding, a photography studio was set up in the attic of the main building so that artists could document even the smallest living specimen that enabled the silk industry to thrive. The Caucasian Sericulture Station changed its mission and status several times, and since 2006 it has functioned as the “State Silk Museum”.

Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum features a unique collection from the museum. When an early 20th century collection of microscopic glass plate negatives was digitized in 2022, the images exposed the many ways that the Soviet Empire employed artists to extend itself into the molecular. Scientific inquiry has long relied on artists to draw evidence or produce empirical knowledge. Today, it is more commonly accepted that truth is not found but is made; and knowledge is situated within a web of many influences, including the culture.

Exhibited at The City University of New York’s Mishkin Gallery in the spring of 2024, this project has been re-contextualized within the newly renovated exhibition spaces of the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, with the continued support of co-curator and Mishkin Gallery Director, Alaina Claire Feldman. Within the framework of the exhibition in addition to photographic images from the museum's archival black-and-white glass plate negatives, the biological life cycle of the silkworm (Bombyx Mori) is prominently displayed in a rarely seen science fiction film "Silk" (1972) by Guram Zhvania, sourced from the Georgian National Archive.

This exhibition was made possible by Friends of the Mishkin Gallery and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY). Travel and research was supported by CEC ArtsLink’s Art Prospect Network Residencies with funding from the Kettering Family Philanthropies and Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Curators: Alaina Claire Feldman and Mariam Shergelashvili