TEXTERE

The exhibition presented in the State Silk Museum’s temporary exhibition hall offers a sketch-like introduction to the museum’s collection of industrial fabrics and related materials. Over the next three months, it will evolve into a research-based and interactive platform.

The samples of Soviet textiles produced at the Tbilisi Silk Weaving Factory during the 1950s–90s had been stored in the museum’s attic for many years. Discovered during the pandemic period (2021), this archival material became the basis for artistic and curatorial research, inspiring a range of creative initiatives. Among these was artist Nino Kvrivishvili’s research project focusing on the Tbilisi Silk Weaving Factory and the people who worked in the textile industry. Kvrivishvili’s work examines the interrelation between memory, individual lives, labor, and material.

The exhibition space also features Guram Tsibakhashvili’s authorial project “Once,” presented for the first time in the museum. Inspired by an archive of old postcards, this work, much like the industrial textile samples, captures the interrelation between memory and time. A special letter corner in the exhibition invites visitors to creatively share their own stories and recollections.

Through this sketch-like exhibition, the museum continues to explore the theme of “lost and found.” How do we analyze collective and individual memory? How do we imagine the tactile experience of an epoch, the visual aesthetics of a specific time and the histories “inscribed” in the surfaces of materials? Here, textures become both physical and emotional matter, carriers of time, labor, and memory woven between objects.

With its open, ever-changing format, the exhibition will evolve into a dynamic process of exchange, unfolding through various public meetings over the three-month period.

This sketch exhibition is realized within the museum’s ongoing exhibition internship program under the supervision of exhibition curator Mariam Shergelashvili.

Participant interns: Nini Bekauri, Anano Gogichadze, Ninutsa Lekishvili, Nini Mamuladze, Sali Khizanishvili