¡No vayas sola, Remedios! / Don’t Go Alone, Remedios! "¡No vayas sola, Remedios!" (Don’t Go Alone, Remedios!) is a work of collaboration between the clay artist Lia Bagrationi and myself. This exhibition is the final project of the long-term program “Art Intervention into the Museum", elaborated and implemented by the Tbilisi State Silk Museum from March 15, 2016. The project is realized in the frames of the “Regional Art and Culture Project in the South Caucasus”, which is managed by the Culture and Management Lab with financial support of the Swiss Cooperation Office for the South Caucasus (SCO). The program aims at creating of new site-specific multimedia installations within the museum context and promoting of collaboration between the curator and the artist inside a museum space. The title "Don’t Go Alone, Remedios!" is a somewhat loose reference towards magical realism. A viewer sees a body of the author transformed into a clay object, which is shaped like a silk cocoon and placed in the museum's showcase. As if voluntarily, the author’s body enters the list of those of Gabriel García Márquez's strange literature characters, be it a beautiful woman soaring in the sky together with laundry or a man with butterflies fluttering around his head. To illustrate a silkworm's transformation into a butterfly, the project stresses the process of clay modification and its final state. The clay metamorphosis is shown on two videos in one of the halls of the museum. One of the videos is created in the museum, while the other is an artistic documentation of Lia Bagrationi’s performance in her studio. The performance carries two meanings within the project; one is historical, as a traditionally important form of intervention (Vienna actionists, Dada, Neo-Dada), and the second is informational as a visual narrative of creation out of clay. The exposition of “¡No vayas sola, Remedios!" reiterates the function of a museum and attempts to show all stages of clay transformation, from white clay as a starting material, to the final product represented in a showcase of the museum's central hall –where the viewer will also see empty, open displays as an attempt of subversive intervention into the museum space. The video performance underlines similarity between the body of an artist, a silkworm cocoon and the final object. A designer dress, created especially for the project and worn by the artist during the performance, reflects the wide utilization of silk in the fashion industry and stresses the sanctity of touching clay. We wish to convey special thanks to cameraman Tato Kotetishvili, artist Tamuna Karumidze (video editing) and designer Gola Damiani (designer of the dress) for their heartfelt support and assistance.

Magda Guruli - Project curator