This year’s Georgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale will take the form of a small, abandoned, wooden hut, the project of Georgian artist Vajiko Chachkhiani and curator Julien Heynen, the artistic director for special projects at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf.
Originally found in the Georgian countryside and reassembled in Venice specifically for the biennale, the small abode holds all that would typically be found inside of a home: furniture, pictures, and other everyday items.
In an aim to address the process of decay, Chachkhiani will install an irrigation system inside that mimics permanent rain—thus playing on the concept of the indoor versus outdoor. Audience members will be able to witness the hut’s interior slowly growing ever-more derelict, with yellow sodium lighting serving to underscore the moss that will inevitably envelop the entirety of the interior over the duration of the exhibition.
Described by the press release as highlighting “the slow entropic process of destruction,” the installation allows for exhibition-goers to watch the hut’s changing composition in real-time, “following a natural dramaturgy that allows for subtle change.”
The exterior of the hut is to remain the same, thereby emphasizing the striking disparity between the facade’s simplicity and the complexity of what is occurring inside.
Vajiko Chachkhiani was born in Tbilisi in 1985, and graduated from the University of Arts in Berlin and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy of Amsterdam. He was most recently included in the group exhibition, “Across the Caucasus,” staged last month at the Ioseb Grishashvili Tbilisi History Museum, and is represented by Daniel Marzona in Berlin.
He was the 2015 recipient of the 7th Rubens Promotional Award of the Contemporary Art Museum Siegen in Germany. The artist is currently shortlisted for the fourth edition of the Future Generation Art Prize, awarded by PinchukArtCentre in Kiev and notable for its roster composed largely of young artists—as all of this year’s nominees are under 35.