Mariam AkubardiaWhere is home now? (2025)

As the artist recalls, while waiting for the minibus toward the Enguri Bridge, the only legal crossing point into the occupied Gali region, she observed the people around her, all travelling to the places where they lived. Nearly all were dressed in black, for in almost every family at least one member had been killed by Russia. Crossing the bridge comes for many “at the cost of humiliation”, yet it remains the only way to see the people left behind. Beyond it, the abandoned bus stops, once decorated with mosaic scenes of “apparent tranquility, cheerful and carefree life”, caught the artist’s gaze. ‘Where is home now?’ sets this idealized imagery against the lived reality of displacement, turning the Soviet mosaics from a backdrop into a stage for memory. At the center of the composition, an elderly woman in black lies motionless on a slab, set into a mosaic of rolling waves and Soviet ideological symbolism. Her smooth, sculptural rendering contrasts with the fragmented tesserae around her. In the foreground, outside the mosaic, a discarded shoe and a mesh bag of fruit rest on the sand. For the artist, they recall the fruit that displaced people carry back from their yards as they return from the occupied territory, “something that reminded them of their connection with others and the rhythm of life they once knew”. The painting stretches time across a single wall, joining a utopian past with a present of grief and a bond with home that survives its loss. The title’s question remains open: home is no longer lived in, but rather carried back in the hands.