Untitled 2022

Curator: Well, hello there! We're looking at a work simply titled "Untitled" by Alevtyna Kakhidze, created in 2022. It's a drawing, primarily ink and pen on paper, showcasing a blend of portraiture and calligraphy. What strikes you first about it? Editor: A sense of immediacy, almost like a news report sketched in real-time. The portraits feel very direct, but also fleeting, like snapshots of figures in the news cycle. It gives off a really raw, emotional vibe. Curator: Absolutely. The artwork documents politically sensitive events as experienced by the artist during a specific time frame, from July to September 2021. Each segment describes different court rulings, sentences, or escapes, with the portrait sketches probably depicting each mentioned personality. Notice how certain words and phrases are highlighted in red, drawing attention to crucial points. What does this use of text and image tell us? Editor: It’s like she’s using visual shorthand. The calligraphic style, combined with those almost cartoonish portraits, makes it both accessible and unsettling. She's dealing with very heavy stuff – court rulings, torture, escapes – but rendering it with this light touch that somehow amplifies the tragedy. Curator: It is her way of dealing with injustice, of making visible the anxieties and traumas present in her life and surrounding political context. This piece shows the narrative quality inherent to all portraiture. Even if untitled and stripped of descriptive context, these portraits manage to deliver emotional truths to a specific audience aware of what happened. How does that inform our experience? Editor: It feels almost like peeking into a private notebook, full of anger and disappointment and truth telling. You can tell this piece of artwork is an attempt to expose what should not have happened to these protesters. Curator: It definitely creates that impression. Art as a form of resistance, perhaps. Editor: Precisely. It makes me think about the power of art to bear witness, even when the institutions fail. This one image carries with it so much injustice and fear, I'll remember it long after leaving. Curator: A potent reminder, indeed.