TIAB VIEWING ROOM: LEVAN MINDIASHVILI
Levan Mindiashvili, Levani's Room: AMERICA (“I STAND AT THE window of this great house [...] as night falls. The night that is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window pane. My reflection is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. […] My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into the darker past.”), 2020
Installation view at The Immigrant Artist Biennial, EFA Project Space, NYC. September 9 - October 24, 2020. Excerpt from James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room" transferred on translucent chiffon, outdoor string lights cord, LED black light bulbs, hanging hardware. Curtain: 12 x 14 3/4 feet, String Lights: 48 feet, bulbs 24, Overall dimension 12 x 14 x 2.5 feet.
Curator’s Text:
Georgian-born artist Levan Mindiashvili’s window installation celebrates and honors the author James Baldwin and the artist Felix Gonzalez Torres, as significant cultural American catalysts for social change. Referencing Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room (1956)–a seminal book in the history of queer literature–the work explores issues of race, colonial history, and class inequality through the lens of an immigrant living in contemporary USA.