Artist Lilit Matevosyan presents her latest project, a book created as a result of her participation in the Garage Field Research program.
Since 2021, Lilit Matevosyan’s artistic practice has focused on the history, nature, and urban environment of Greater Sochi, where her family has lived since the late 1990s. The starting point of her long-term research was the project Resortworld (since 2021), in which she attempts to deconstruct the Soviet tourist image of the city by working with the personal archives of Sochi residents, the creation of collages, and mediated urban walks.
With the artistic research project An Island Surrounded by Land, which she began in 2023, the artist turned to the study of the Caucasian War (1817–1864), the consequences of which were tragic for the Adyghe (the indigenous inhabitants of the Black Sea region of the North-Western Caucasus) and shaped the subsequent development of their culture beyond broad public visibility. While working on this project as part of Garage Field Research in 2023–2024, Matevosyan addressed the close relationship between the lifeworld of the Shapsugs (a sub-ethnic group of the Adyghe) and the local natural environment, as well as the contemporary transformations of the landscape resulting from the expansion and renewal of Sochi’s tourist infrastructure that began in the mid-2010s.
This artist’s book An Island Surrounded by Land / Even Boxwood Forgets was produced in an edition of 10 copies and consists of two volumes—An Island Surrounded by Land and Even Boxwood Forgets—housed in a handmade felt slipcase. It is a kind of travelogue, featuring Matevosyan’s photographs, notes, and texts, as well as interviews and archival documents selected and edited together with the research participants, alongside Soviet archival materials from the artist’s ongoing Resortworld project. Lilit invited Adyghe artists Milana Khalilova and Mila Khatsuk to collaborate on the production of the book. Khalilova created the felt covers, with an ornament referencing the Adyghe tradition of gold embroidery. Placed within the soft woolen texture, the ornament, in the artist’s view, becomes an act of care, emphasizing the role of embroidery as a means of recording the memory and way of life of the Adyghe people. Mila Khatsuk designed a round symbol for the cover of the volume An Island Surrounded by Land, its laconic form reinterpreted by the artist as representing the unifying national circle dance.
At the event, Lilit Matevosyan will speak about the significance of the materials and the graphic elements of each volume, as well as how the various conceptual threads of her research were embodied in the form of the book. Mila Khatsuk, who will also join in the conversation, will discuss Adyghe ornament, its classification, and the specifics of working with it using examples from her artistic practice.
The audience will have the opportunity to explore copies of both books.
