Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili

Familiar and impersonal at the same time, the plastic bag is at the centre of Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili's most recent work. Fascinated by this object that is both fragile and sustainably polluting - this "fossil of the future" according to the artist - she has been collecting them for several years. In her native Georgia, some of these tourist bags bear traditional ornamental motifs, similar to those found in Byzantine churches. The curtain presented here is typical of the artist's method: it is made from a 4 x 5 inch negative to which she has affixed a plastic bag illuminated with a luminous finger - a popular accessory among clubbers - and is adapted to the nature and dimensions of the exhibition site. The translucent material of the textile and its drooping drape refer to the artist's attachment to the play of transparency and light as well as to the window motif that appears in many of her works, while the black edges recall the analogy between the rectangle of the photograph and the window that opens onto the world.