The exhibition Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum, Tbilisi opened at Mishkin Gallery on March 22 and is on view through June 7, 2024.
The exhibition has been co-curated by Alaina Claire Feldman (Director and Curator, Mishkin Gallery) and Mariam Shergelashvili (Exhibition Curator, State Silk Museum) and features a selection of black and white historic photographs from the State Silk Museum in Tbilisi, Georgia,alongside the film Raised in the Dust (2022) by Georgian artist Andro Eradze.
Forty-seven of these photographs, which detail the lifecycle of the Bombyx mori (commonly known as the silk moth), are presented and re-contextualized alongside Andro Eradze’s Film Raised in the Dust. In this film, which is based off the famous Georgian poem The Snake-Eater (1901) by Vazha Pshavela, a nocturnal and non-human perspective takes center-stage and calls attention to the hypervisibility of “wild” animals made possible through human intervention. The film premiered at the 2022 Biennale di Venezia and this presentation marks its New York debut. Seen here together, distinctions between wild vs. domestic, native vs. foreign, art vs. science, past vs. present begin to fall apart.
Coinciding with the exhibition is a publication edited by the curators and designed by Geoff Kaplan/General Working Group that includes full-page image plates and writing on this collection of photographs and the history of the State Silk Museum.
Taxonomies of Power: Photographic Encounters at the State Silk Museum, Tbilisi has been curated by Alaina Claire Feldman and Mariam Shergelashvili. The program is made possible by Friends of the Mishkin Gallery and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College (CUNY). Travel research and initial introduction between the two museums was supported by CEC ArtsLink’s Art Prospect Network Residencies with funding from the Kettering Family Philanthropies and Trust for Mutual Understanding.
Photography: Isabel Asha Penzlien.
©Mishkin Gallery
For the detailed information please visit the links:
