Exhibition Tbilisi
The images are intriguing; I’ve seen the posters plastered on buildings and boarded-over windows and the dirty glass of bus shelters. One shows a young woman in pigtails holding a small bouquet, the other a pair of hands—an old woman’s hands—clasped together perhaps in prayer. TBILISI, the posters read, Photographs by Vincent Lappartient. Rustaveli ave 16/entrance on Besiki str 1. Free entrance.
It’s my birthday, the 6th of November, a grey morning, damp and cold with flurries of snow in the biting wind. Why not, I think, why not check it out? Rustaveli Avenue is one of the grand, double-wide streets of Tbilisi, so wide that crossing means going underground to re-emerge on the opposite side. Running into Freedom Square like the spoke of a wheel into its hub, the avenue is easy to find from the Marriott, our temporary quarters. Finding Besiki Street is a bit tricky but in the end I stumble onto it, led by a paper trail of posters.
The photographs are mounted simply, unframed and hanging all around the walls, some high above. All are images of Tbilisi: its people, buildings, overgrown gardens, churches, laundry lines, trams and buses, the lively and disintegrating city. A recording of Georgian choral music is playing, its polyphonic harmonies vibrant, thrilling, haunting.
I circle the room until I notice the recording has looped back to its beginning. I want a catalog, want to take the images with me, but there is only a small booklet for sale, badly printed and with small black and white photographs—a pity. Finally I tear myself away, but I will return several times, with a friend, with Jim, or alone; I am bewitched. This is where I begin to fall deeply in love with Tbilisi.
Weeks later, after the installation has closed, I buy a heavy duty box cutter-cum-scraper. I prowl the avenues Rustaveli and Chavchavadze in search of the two posters that first drew me into that magical experience. When I find one in good condition I cut and scrape until it comes away intact; after several tries I have one of each and I take them to the steps of the former Academy of Sciences where in the flea market there I have the pair of posters framed on the spot, for the sum of about $25. Now I can rest; now I have proof that it all happened, it was not a dream.