Artistic research. An Island Surrounded by Land
2023—ongoing
The two-year research project has focused on the region of the Northwest Caucasus that adjoins the Black Sea, where the artist grew up and where she lives and works (specifically, in Sochi). “Every person should know the history of the place they live in.” This quote by Murdin Teshev, an elder of the village of Shkhafit near Sochi, which the artist recorded during one of her research trips, she says best sums up the purpose of her project—to study and rethink, through art, the history of a region hidden behind its century-old poster image as a year-round tourist destination.
This research grew out of the project Resortworld, which the artist embarked on in March 2021, aiming to investigate representations of Sochi from the 1950s through the 1990s. Using depictions of the city on tourist postcards, in personal photographs, and reportage, Matevosyan examined how the image of the city as “the Soviet Union’s preeminent wellness resort” differed from how it was actually perceived by its residents. Resortworld drew, among other sources, on the archives of the descendants of families who moved to the Black Sea coast after the Caucasian War (1817–1864). The stories they told and the way they engaged with the memory of the place inspired the artist to delve deeper into the local context. Her study of the cultures of the native peoples of what has become the Greater Sochi region, particularly the Shapsugs—a sub-ethnic group of the Circassians (Adyghe)—became the starting point for the project An Island Surrounded by Land.
Important outcome of the first stage of research was a zine featuring portraits and landscape photography that Lilit Matevosyan made during her trips. The images were complemented by first-person accounts from representatives of Circassian families exploring the preservation of their culture, language, and rites, as well as their ancestors’ difficult experiences of migration in the wake of the Caucasian War.
The title of the project refers to the book The ”Insular” Civilization of Circassia by historian Samir Khotko and cultural scholar Bella Agrba, which describes Circassia as a land hidden behind a natural fortress of mountains covered in ancient forests. Matevosyan focuses on the importance of nature, in particular of forests, gardens, and groves in Circassian culture, as well as the changes in the natural landscape of the Northwest Caucasus over the past 100 years. Along with an environmental agenda, she is interested in the symbolism of local plant life being displaced by species introduced from elsewhere. During the second stage of her project, the artist created a series of works that explore the destruction of boxwood (Buxus colchica) by pests accidentally brought to the region during preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Buxus colchica, a small tree with very hard wood endemic to the Caucasian coast, had for centuries been a symbol of local nature and of perseverance and the preservation of generational memory. In her works—photographs, collages, and videos—Matevosyan depicts the dying groves of Buxus colchica as spaces filled with ghosts: the physical evidence of the species in decline, as well as the echoes of many losses that follow its disappearance and affect ecosystems, cultures, and communities.
The project will ultimately result in an artist’s book, Even Boxwood Forgets, with Matevosyan’s own photographs and notes and archival and research materials that she has collected over two years of research. Matevosyan has used collage as a method for structuring the book’s narrative, accepting the inherently subjective and simplified nature of any representation of a history or a landscape, while providing a space for open interpretation of her findings through the juxtaposition of varied and at times conflicting visual materials and archival documents. In Even Boxwood Forgets Matevosyan surrenders any attempt to provide an impartial record of what the Northwest Caucasus used to be and what it is now, instead offering a deeply personal account of her evolving relationship with this land.
Text: Ekaterina (Katya) Savchenko
The initial stage of the project was developed with Ekaterina (Katya) Savchenko and supported by Garage Field Research program, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2023-24.
Collaboration, dialogue, and building horizontal connections serve as key principles in Lilit Matevosyan’s practice. Accordingly, As Island Surrounded by Land has brought together a large number of participants: historians, ethnographers, botanists, and representatives of Circassian families who the artist had met during her trips to several areas of Greater Sochi and the towns of Abkhazia. After the first year of her research, Matevosyan organized a series of meetings that provided a platform for project participants to voice their views directly. The Teshev family, who founded the Ashe ethnic and cultural center in the village of Shkhafit, spoke about their family history and the preservation of the culture of the Black Sea Circassians. Historian Mikhail Kudin was joined by Madin Khusht, a collector of histories of the indigenous peoples of Greater Sochi, in a discussion on local rites and the preservation of ancient heritage. Philologist Madina Pashtova and historian and academic consultant to the project Vitaly Shtybin met for a conversation on sociocultural identities and the ethnic future of the Circassian diaspora as we know it today.
Exhibition.
Even Boxwood Forgets
September 21 — October 11, 2024
SKLAD_, Sukhum, Abkhasia
Lilit Matevosyan’s solo exhibition Even Boxwood Forgets continues her ongoing dialogue with the SKLAD cultural space around archives, trauma, and memory—a conversation initiated with the 2018 project Going Back to the Archives. This exhibition presents a more focused segment of Matevosyan’s broader extensive artistic investigation into the traditions and histories of the Indigenous peoples of the Northwestern Caucasus.
Matevosyan’s practice investigates narratives hidden beneath the postcard-perfect image of the Caucasian Black Sea coast, an aesthetic largely shaped and enforced during the Soviet era. Since 2021, she has been working on Resortworld, a project archiving personal and documentary photographs made by Sochi residents between the 1950s and the 1990s. Available publicly in digital format, these archives illuminate everyday life in Sochi, existing in parallel with its seasonal tourist culture.
In 2023, with the support of the Garage Museum’s Field Research program, Matevosyan embarked on a new artistic research project, An Island Surrounded by Land. The project is an inquiry into the culture of the Shapsugs—a sub-ethnic group of the Circassians (Adyghe)—the Indigenous peoples of the Northwestern Caucasus displaced from this territory by the Russian Empire in the wake of the Caucasian War (1817–1864).
Even Boxwood Forgets focuses specifically on the tragic fate of the Colchic boxwood (Buxus colchica), an endemic tree native to the region. Historically central to the landscape and cultural practices of Circassian communities, boxwood has faced near extinction since 2012 due to careless landscaping associated with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. This event introduced and accelerated the spread of an invasive butterfly species, devastating local boxwood populations. The exhibition includes documentary footage captured by Igor Khakhalin in the Yew-and-Boxwood Grove near Sochi, depicting dying trees eerily covered in moth webs—poignant evidence of ecological ruin.
The concept of modern nature haunted by “ghosts” emerges in contemporary Anthropocene thought, where such “ghosts” are evoked not just as spirits of extinct species but also as a kind of layered loss embedded in ecosystems, cultures, and communities that echoes through ecological catastrophies. Matevosyan embraces this perspective, framing the story of the Colchic boxwood as part of this wider landscape of disappearance. Even Boxwood Forgets attempts to map the scale and implications of the loss of the local endemic plant. Lilit Matevosyan encounters the ghosts of buxus colchica not only as she treks through the forests surrounding Sochi, but also while conversing with the residents of Adyghe villages, researching historical documents and local legends, and listening to the insect-like rattle of the phachich (a traditional wooden clapper). These fragments, gathered and recorded by the artist, form a haunting mosaic that affirms a central insight of Anthropocene thought: the disappearance of a single species can signal an unraveling far beyond a mere change in landscape.
Text: Ekaterina (Katya) Savchenko
Thanks for the help of those who participated in the preparation of the exhibition and the research work in Abkhazia: Asida Butba, Ainar Hashig, Leo Logua, Mramza Lakashia, Hamida Gumba, Recep Uchak, Jade Jemre, Anastasia Dmitrievskaya, Anna Bykova, Alina Zhiba, Dmitry Gabelia, Mikhail Kiria, Naida and Aya Abidov, employees of the Abkhazian State Museum Taisiya Alania and Ruslan Aguazhba and director of the Sukhumi Botanical Garden Eduard Gubaz.
For their contribution to An Island Surrounded by Land, the artist wishes to express her gratitude to: Alij Alallo, Damir Achokh, Aydamir Baste, Darya Bobrenko, Diana Goncharova, Yuri Dudin, Ksenia Zhukova, Natalya Karpun, Kristina Klemesheva, Nabi Koblev, Mikhail Kudin, Marina Kurashinova, Natalya Loktea, Yulia Naberezhnaya, Madina Pashtova, Oksana Polyakova, Vladimir Pshenokov, Marina Romanova, Ekaterina Savchenko, Murdin Teshev, Safet, Shamset and Maria Teshev, Aisa Tlif, Bulat Khalilov, Ruslan and Saret Kheyshkho, Madin Khusht, Tamara Chuntyzheva, Vitaly Shtybin, Auches and Valid Skhalakhov, Batmiz Skhalakhov, the Achmizov family from the aul Psebe and Tereshev family from the aul Nadzhigo, workers of the houses of culture of the village Tsypka and the auls Agui-Shapsug and Maloye Pseushkho, all the residents of the Tuapsinsky and Lazarevsky districts who opened the doors of their homes, shared literature and supported me while working on this project, as well as the Adyghe Kheku Telegram channel, the Shyble podcast (Islam Sapiyev and Gunef Yedydzh), and the journal SCAPP.
Special thanks to my companions during all the expeditions: my husband Andrey Kuznetsov and son Nairi Kuznetsov.