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Contemporary Art Archive - Tbilisi

Archive of Academic Writings

2021 Edition of the Project is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sport and Youth of Georgia

They Kept Shadows Quiet

Installation

Vajiko Chachkhiani

one-way mirror glass panels, cinderblocks, mortar, metal doors, MDF, wood, pain
2018
396x305x244 cm.
„They Kept Shadows Quiet“ (solo exhibition) at Scrap Metal Gallery, Toronto, Canada

The eponymous installation"They Kept Shadows Quiet" (2018) consists of two “interrogation chambers” installed side by side and flipped inside out. These chambers recall border patrol checkpoints where refuges and migrants are detained to await “processing,” and yet their reversal of inside and outside defuses these sinister connotations, as visitors are able to traverse the narrow passage between the two chambers unimpeded. The situation is familiar and unfamiliar at once: not only is the exterior architecture built and painted to resemble the exterior, but the installation also reverses the usual direction of the surveillance gaze by installing spyglass along the walls facing the passage and making the mirrors semitransparent. Looking out from each room, the figure of authority is partly visible as a silhouette, implicitly menacing yet ultimately powerless to interfere with the passers-by.