Untitled 2022

Curator: Let's explore this piece, simply titled "Untitled," by Alevtyna Kakhidze, created in 2022. It’s a drawing rendered in ink and pen. Editor: My first impression? It's strangely melancholic. The stark black lines against the white background give it a sense of emptiness, despite the figures. It feels like a commentary on power and fragility. Curator: Indeed. Kakhidze often employs readily available, unpretentious materials like pen and ink to produce art that invites reflections on social conditions, even those relating to material conditions and what labor extracts from people. Notice the seemingly simple, almost naive technique; how does this deliberate choice of materials influence the narrative? Editor: It lends it a certain universality, doesn't it? The simplified forms invite projection, making it less about a specific empire and more about the general cycle of rise and fall, echoing archetypes found across cultures. The crown as a vessel, with figures balanced precariously, evokes images of authority resting on unsteady foundations, mirroring cycles of history. Curator: Precisely! The rough linework underscores the provisional, impermanent nature of such structures of power. Look closely at the drawing; the inscription states "all EMPIRES have fallen" accompanied by tiny figures teetering atop the crown's peaks and at the base an even smaller crowd is observing the big crown. Also note the immediate retort from this other group on the right that states "Not, really", and even the little chat with someone from this group on the left who is saying to the small crowd to the right “Why are you so back?”. Editor: That subtle yet potent interplay between text and image is key. It feels cyclical like something akin to an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail. There’s the rise of the few and the observing of the crowd, with the retort echoing, always. It makes you think about how we perpetuate these cycles. The image challenges our understanding of how cultural symbols like the crown wield power across time, too, it suggests this is more complicated than its mere fall and/or dismantling. Curator: Kakhidze presents us not just with the deconstruction of empire but questions of persistence, resilience, and ultimately, who benefits and labors and resists. This seemingly modest drawing in pen and ink thus becomes a point of departure for probing much larger concerns, rooted in access and labor and land. Editor: Absolutely. It’s a reminder that these grand narratives of power, empires, are constructs, made and unmade and built and unmade, imbued with symbolic weight—often divorced from the realities of those within and without it. Curator: An apt way to view the interplay between material reality and its ever-evolving iconography of representation! Editor: It invites us to question what symbols mean to us now, too! A worthwhile interrogation.