WIP
2025
artistic research in progress
If oil became the “black gold” of the Caucasus by the century’s end, silk was its “white gold” at the beginning. In 19th-century Georgia, Russian imperial officials and European industrialists mobilized silkworms and imprisoned women to build a silk empire that could rival France and Italy. This research traces how sericulture (which was usually practised by Caucasian women in domestic spaces) was transformed into a colonial infrastructure of soft power, where labor was gendered, bureaucratized, and aestheticized. Drawing on archival and material analysis, it repositions silk as a weapon of imperial governance.
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‘Tatar man selling cocoons’, 1982, Caucasus , Tbilisi State Silk Museum Collection
If oil became the “black gold” of the Caucasus by the century’s end, silk was its “white gold” at the beginning. In 19th-century Georgia, Russian imperial officials and European industrialists mobilized silkworms and imprisoned women to build a silk empire that could rival France and Italy. This research traces how sericulture (which was usually practised by Caucasian women in domestic spaces) was transformed into a colonial infrastructure of soft power, where labor was gendered, bureaucratized, and aestheticized. Drawing on archival and material analysis, it repositions silk as a weapon of imperial governance.
‘Tatar man selling cocoons’, 1982, Caucasus , Tbilisi State Silk Museum Collection