Alevtina Kakhidze. A Field as a Garden, 2022. Installation, object, digital print, text, video, 5’45’’
Description
The work A Field as a Garden is part of Alevtina Kakhidze’s long-term project The Adult Garden, which includes artistic works as well as research and civic initiatives that explore the autonomy and sustainability of gardening practices. In this piece, Kakhidze again addresses the themes of time and the garden, while also adopting the format of a news report from the future. These news stories, along with other elements of the installation, reference the history of Ukrainian perennial wheat—research into which was interrupted during the Soviet era, in the late 1930s. In the context of current wars and ecological crisis, Kakhidze draws renewed attention to the need to cultivate perennial flora. In her imagined news from Ukraine’s best possible future, she envisions wheat gardens being grown and restaurants of invasive cuisine opening—serving plants that originate from other parts of the world and have become invasive in Ukraine.
The work was presented at the group exhibition “Heart of the Earth” at the Mystetskyi Arsenal in 2022–2023, curated by Olga Zhuk, Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta, Anna Pohribna, and Natasha Chychasova. Also, during the exhibition, Alevtina Kakhidze recorded a conversation with botanist Oleksiy Kovalenko about the origin of some plant species, perennial plantations, and possibilities to prevent further spread of ecological problems.
- A Field as a Garden, 2022 [Video] / Alevtina Kakhidze. YouTube. December 28, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NewQQfGDkJA.
