I see the Republic of Georgia, where I was born in 1979, as I see these plastic bags: in a conflict with itself. Using genetically reworked, traditional Georgian ornaments, originally found in the architecture of byzantine churches on plastic bags for packing semi-ethnic, tourist goods, to communicate a similar dissonance to the one contained in the identity crisis of the country itself. For me they chart a strange but familiar territory of not belonging to a clear context. They are not clear logos of specific brands but rather auric symbols of an ambiguous “Georgianness” which is itself in a crisis. Plastic bags themselves also communicate a paradox because they simultaneously project fragility and immortality. They can take up to ten centuries to decompose, and yet can rip from a touch. In being hazardous and globally discontinued they also feel like future fossils, communicating information about our time to another.If photography is mainly a play between time and light, plastic bags have a kinship with the medium in that they reflect as well as allow light to come through them while communicating a forceful hold on time.
- Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili
Familiar and impersonal at the same time, the plastic bag is at the center of Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili’s most recent work. The artist, fascinated by an object both fragile and enduringly pollutive, has for several years collected specimens of what she calls a « future fossil ». In the country of Georgia, where she was born, a number of these bags intended for tourist consumption display traditional ornamental motifs, similar to those you find in Byzantine churches.
- Sonia Voss