Vajiko Chachkhiani
"Big and Little hands"

Georgian artist Vajiko Chachkhiani (Born in 1985, in Tbilisi, Georgia), is known for his multilayered sculpture and installations that extract human psychological states and social situations in a metaphoric manner. Selected as a representative artist of the Georgian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), Chachkhiani installed a small abandoned wooden house found in the countryside of Georgia and created an uncanny and continuous rainfall inside the structure. Chachkhiani's second solo exhibition at SCAI THE BATHHOUSE includes a grouping of new sculptures as well as a research-based installation which he both shot and produced. History and nature, absence and presence, family and economy - dichotomous concepts and the contradictions that they create are central concerns in the artist's practice, sublimated via his own dialectical approach.

His new video, Big and Little hands (2024), from which the exhibition is titled, is primarily inspired by a poem by Georgian poet Galaktion Tabidze(1892-1959). A dialectic of life and death, in the words of the artist, the themes of capitalist economics and politics and the precariousness of their effects on human beings are depicted with a symbolic visual language. The film starts as a documentary showing a portrait of a historical market in Tbilisi, the market a casualty of governmental closure. Immersed in the fictional structure of the film, viewers witness an overworked fruit vendor working in the market as he falls asleep at the wheel. A related car accident involving a child is the core story of the film. And as the scene changes, the screen shows different setups, a village in Georgia, daily summer situations, and three sisters singing, then, ending with an enigmatic shot of another three pairs of eyes glowing under the dirt. Questioning the idea of visible and invisible, Chachkhiani explores such interrogations: where does the real voice come from? does it come from the depth of the psyche, hidden behind layers of psychic constructions, formed by the history of the family, place and society?

Burned tree twigs, old wooden boards, a tiny log house – the artworks installed on the wall and the floor are components of the film. In addition to the historical market, Chachkhiani selected as a film setting the old village of Itkhvisi, home to a manganese mining plant that resulted in the destruction of houses and the forced evacuation of residents from their ancestral lands. Sculptures in various shapes, placed within the exhibition space, are derived from abandoned objects dotted around the village and collected by the artist. Stating that his intention is “to create a certain resistance without working directly against a situation”, these works, made of pigmented and textured plaster, materialize his artistic gesture, and breathe new life into the past. A piece characterized by countless thorns, through the artist’s metaphorical use of the wreckage of houses, inspired by woodpecker’s habit, shows a projection of the memory of living residents whose voice is ignored due to political and economic forces. A small log house, with its burned interior walls, projects the human psyche, especially that of an infant as family continues to be one of the most important themes for the artist. Implicit in the burnt log house is the theme of a powerless existence affected by a greater power; this is also reflected in the title of the exhibition, “Big and Little hands”. On the steps, visitors will view an installation named Father, Mother, Daughter(2024). Dealing with the idea of absence, the piece consists of three old tailor’s boards, each bearing the traces of past patterns. The work is composed of a small board floating above the floor, hanging from the two bigger boards on either side and corresponds to the main theme of the exhibition.

In the end, a camera sneaks beneath the ground where the three sisters stand - a dark place occulted by their beautiful appearance - to reveal the complex structure of the film, full of symbolism and suggestion; implied is another existence really doing the singing. Big and Little hands – considering subjects as diverse as politics, economics, family and history, Chachkhiani’s artistic achievement reveals the layered structures of power and powerlessness, and questions the meta-reality that reflects an inner psychology of human beings and social conditions beyond one’s control.