Ana Mikadze (b*2002), Georgian designer, artist and art researcher of Armenian descent (Kars). Their work mainly addresses the material and infrastructural legacies of imperialism and colonialism in the Caucasus, tracing them to the contemporary conditions of extractivism, labor, and the processes of borderization. With a background in industrial design, their practice emerges from their profound interest in the entanglements of design, history, and geopolitics. Ana’s work moves across installations, investigations, text and material inquiry.
site under construction
© Ana Mikadze 2025
open to collaborations
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