Located at a juncture in the Silk Road, Georgia played an important role in the silk trade. Under the Soviet Union, Georgia was one non-independent republics and Georgian silk was a luxury product for the ladies of the Communist Party’s nomenklatura. With the collapse of the planned economy, which was based on the interdependence of national economies, came the end of the country’s silk-weaving industry. Coveted materials and patterns vanished.
Nino Kvrivishvili finds individual pieces at flea markets. Using these fragments of the glamorous side of communist life, she created a series of portraits originally displayed in the Silk Museum in Tbilisi in 2016. She lays the classic oval matt, which was usually mounted over a rectangular painting to concentrate the viewer’s attention on a portrait, over the free-hanging fabric panel. ‘Clothes make the woman’ – the portrait is reduced to the luxurious fabric itself.