Education
Nino Sekhniashvili (2013)
Forty-two objects made of high-grade serpentine
Dimensions: variable, length 1–10 cm
Lender: evn collection, Maria Enzersdorf, Austria
Georgian artist Nino Sekhniashvili is a conceptual artist who works in a wide variety of materials and artistic techniques. Born in Georgia in 1979, she studied experimental sculpture under Rosemarie Trockel in Düsseldorf and then printmaking in Tbilisi. Today, she not only works as an artist, but also runs Nectar, a gallery for international contemporary art in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, since 2013. This independent artist-run-space is an important venue in Tbilisi to catch current art that is rarely shown there.
In 2013, Sekhniashvili took part in a fourteen-day international symposium in the municipality of Bernstein in Burgenland. This municipality is home to a large quarry where serpentine is mined, a material used for producing souvenirs. A natural stone nearly two million years old, serpentine has a fine structure, minimal cracks, and is easy to work with.
Using serpentine remnants from local jewelry and souvenir production, the artist created everyday objects, such as tools reminiscent of Stone Age artifacts. The objects include knives and arrows, sewing needles in a small bottle or thimble, buttons, a comb, a cigarette holder, and a shot glass. The artist arranged these in a museum display case, in the manner of a Stone Age collection—similar to how museums present valuable old excavation finds (see also the excavation pieces from the Stadtmuseum St. Pölten). She chose Erziehung (Education) as the title this work. This raises a number of questions, such as how the presentation and location where objects are exhibited influence their value. Are we educated to immediately identify things exhibited in a museum, protected under a glass cover, in a display case, as valuable? What value do we attach to art, especially when it is perhaps closer to everyday life and is not immediately recognizable as art?
Andreas Hoffer, based on a text by Brigitte Huck, evn collection