I began to make art during the communist times. I knew intuitively that I had to resist everything imposed on me from the outside: i.e., Georgian national cultural standards and traditional ethnic patterns of images, Georgian habits and traditions, and, above all, the communist ideology and its iconography. The cultural information in the West was so minor as an influence that its very form—at least as this appeared to us in Georgia—looked like a conceptual artwork which had to be unfolded and finished in our imagination. This scant information led to our building images of contemporary Western culture in our consciousness, and strongly determined the feeling of the cultural differences separating our two controversial worlds. But when I arrived in the West, the difference I was imagining was in fact not similar to the one I had been carrying inside. It appeared to be merely the consequence of my subjective imagination…
My visit to Kazan happened just before the beginning of the war between Georgia and Abkhazia. So the flight from Kazan back to Tbilisi was canceled and I was forced to take the last flight to Gagra, a city in Abkhazia. When I arrived in Gagra it became clear that there was no possibility of returning to Tbilisi. So I found myself standing in the middle of the city alone and perplexed. In this desperate search for some other option, I decided to go back to the airport to see if I might find a solution there. Halfway down the road, I found that this was a vain hope, as the airport was closed. On the way back to the city I noticed that the taxi driver was looking at me through the mirror in such a way that if I had shown any fear at all he would have tried to fulfill his evil wish. All that I could see along this road was forest, and if he would have murdered me, no one would ever have discovered it. Luckily, we reached the train station and I searched for opportunities to reach Tbilisi, to no avail. For the first time I felt in real danger! The situation around was quite tense. I decided to move step by step, and find some way to reach Kutaisi, the second main city in Georgia. But I had to find travelling partners to feel more secure—ideally one man and one woman. It would be even better if the man was stout; they are generally more kind, or so the thought that rushed through my head. Soon I had found both companions, approximately my age, and we began to search for a taxi. It took us to the nearest train station. Again, no train and it was getting dark.
When the driver noticed our desperation he suggested that we stay overnight at his place. We agreed. He had a wife and a nice daughter and they kindly served us dinner. During dinner somebody rang the gate bell. The host went out and returned telling us that soldiers were asking him whether there were any Georgians at his place. The host did not reveal us. It was a big relief to sleep in a bed made up with fresh linens after a day filled with such worries. The next morning, these kind people took us to the bus station and did not leave till the bus door was closed, making sure that our Georgian identity would not be revealed. So finally, we traveled to Kutaisi. After our arrival there, half an hour later, the same bus carried on, driving towards Tbilisi. After a drive of several hours the bus had become increasingly empty. My traveling partners left when we reached Zestafoni, and when we passed Rikoti Pass there were only nine people, including the driver—three of them women. All were from Imereti, a Georgian ethnic group. As the tension slowly faded, the only thing we now worried about was the weather and the bad condition of the
roads. People around me were becoming acquainted with each other, exchanging names freely—at least before it became dangerous. Everybody tried to find mutual contacts. In the first row, a woman said that her name was Kapanadze. It appeared that another person was on the bus with the same name, Kapanadze, meaning there were three of us with that name. But nobody asked my name, thinking I was a foreigner. We arrived in Tbilisi, at the bus station, at 9 pm. I took the metro, then a bus, and after 36 hours of travel, finally reached home. Within a week the borders were closed between Georgia and Abkhasia and the war began.
Zurich
I am sitting next to a large window in the old café, at the railway station. My thoughts are running as quickly as roads—Tbilisi-Petersburg-Paris-Zurich-Frankfurt-Tbilisi. In Petersburg and Paris I was starring in an Otar Iosseliani film. The day we finished making the film we had an eccentric party in the film director’s villa on Montmartre. Just in front of the toilet there was a large painting by Andy Warhol. On another evening, in Zurich, I met a nice modest man, who appeared to be the nephew of James Joyce. Unfortunately, I soon had to leave for Georgia. My show in Basel was finished and I took my drawings with me. Being on so many roads and carrying so many worrisome thoughts about what I would do in Tbilisi after my return, where professional artists cannot survive, I left the folder with all my drawings on a sofa at the back of a cafe in Zurich by accident. I would find them again six years later…
Paris
I have been in Paris for more than a month and still have six months to go… Much too much culture. I have never felt so homeless, landless, shelterless. The gorgeous city… alienated and remote; full of flatter, charming chit-chats, self-indulgent looks and phrases; one can follow it endlessly, never crossing it and never wanting to do so… From my window I see Notre-Dame. My art is Quasimodo, which shelters me from the ignorance of outer social space.
