With 2 large-scale installations, one on the façade of the City Hall, and the second at the Konschthal Esch, the first part of the Dis-placed exhibition raises the question of our conception of ‚home‘. With a utopian vision of architecture for Oase Nr. 7, and a sense of fragility and nostalgia for Living Dog Among Dead Lions – Agape, these two monumental works invite us to reflect on our homes and the stories attached to them.
‘Home’ is often associated with a piece of architecture, a territory, or an environment, as well as feelings of safety, comfort, and familiarity. Every day, individuals or groups are forced to leave their home – their domicile, their usual place of residence, their community, and their country – under coercion or oppression. Armed conflict, persecution, violence, natural disasters, and other factors that make a place of origin unbearable or put people’s safety at risk can lead to exodus. Yet, ‘loss of home’ does not always lead to emigration: the renunciation of a given set of beliefs or nostalgia for an ideology can also create feelings of loss of identity, of a sense of belonging to a community, of a place that is one’s own.
Oase Nr. 7 is the result of pioneering architectural and artistic reflections on the consequences of pollution and climate change, as well as on the desire to escape urban spaces (for example by heading to an oasis). The aerial structure, which is shaped like a bubble, is the symbol of a utopia that could well become reality.
Work on display on the façade of the City Hall of Esch-sur-Alzette from 06.07.2024 to 06.10.2024.
Vajiko Chachkhiani (*1985) presents a recreation of the monumental installation he originally produced in 2017 for the Georgian pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Living Dog Among Dead Lions – Agape comprises a bucolic Georgian pavilion, the likes of which can still be found in the countryside of Georgia, a country situated on the border between Europe and Asia.
On display at the Konschthal Esch from 06.07.2024 to 19.01.2025.
Video: SKIN.