Abkhazia

The first series (Topophilia-Abkhazie) shows you for the most part ruins of constructions dating from before 1955. The choice of presenting monuments of the Stalin era is due to their aesthetic aspect. This abandoned monumental architecture becoming almost unreal exists to reinforce this kind of “feeling to belong to nowhere” that you can feel in this territory which is waiting for international recognition in order to exist beyond Russia. The last pictures of the post Stalinist architecture show you how the country is isolated from international relationships as for example the ancient airport of the capital. Between dream and reality, the walk I suggest you aims to remind you my inspirations drawn from the Romanticism which represents a big part of my work. Just like the wanderings of Théophile Gauthier, we enter, from the first picture onwards, via an arcade in an almost imaginary territory that permits the sight of the Black Sea in memory of this ancient glorious Riviera of the URSS. The second series (Voyage-hétéroclite-Abkhazie) with the name « Voyage hétéroclite » (see annex) is the part of work started 4 years ago made about all crossed countries. I would like to present you the part of this personal work about Abkhazia. It will take me still many years to finish it. The idea is to immerge yourself inside a succession of man-made constructions which sometimes have neither a signification nor an obvious existing link between them. The aim is to recreate in this heterogeneous chaos a kind of comprehension of the world and our stories and histories. In this selection we pass from bus stop ruins to new buildings symbolizing independence till beach equipments. We continue our way passing by official buildings under the Soviet regime to abandoned Georgian houses. At the end, we see a non-used propaganda sign to some mosaics of official art which can only be interpreted by the people of this epoch. This succession of constructions tells us a story based on approximations, propaganda, souvenirs and so called “it’s said” (stories which are not verifiable and which become true when repeated often enough) with different points of view but it is the constructions and the traces which map the past of a geographical zone.