Missing Monument

Missing Monument is an online project initiated and supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in collaboration with the visual artists Tamuna Chabashvili.

To commemorate the 2020 anniversary of the International Day of the Disappeared and constrained by the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) decided to create a digital exhibition dedicated to missing persons and their families.  Assembled from interviews and other materials provided by relatives of persons who disappeared during the conflicts of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the 1990s and 2008, the exhibition tries to convey the complexity of missing someone: envisioning this experience as a living, breathing, constantly shifting multiplicity of embodied acts of commemoration:  in other words, as permanent acts against forgetting.

The historical and specific backgrounds of the 1990s and 2008 conflicts are intentionally avoided, as the purpose of the artwork is to focus on the common nature of the pain one may suffer when trying to live and cope with the absence of a disappeared relative. This pain has no land, no nationality, and no one's pain is greater than someone else's.  In the words of a mother of a missing son, "Grief has no nationality. We live under a common sky; our pain is the same." For many families, not knowing what happened to their loved ones and not being able to give them a dignified burial, or a place to mourn, generates an intolerable burden.

Missing Monument is neither a typical counter-monument nor a traditional commemorative practice centered on the victims or heroes. Instead, it is a space of reflection about the process undertaken by the families of the missing ones, bringing together the missed and the missing ones. On a conceptual and visual level, the artist was inspired by the form of a tree: as a symbol of life and a metaphor for continuity, stability, and strength. She created twelve different trees one could visit, with the “sound tree” acting as an opening of the exhibition. Like a chorus in Greek tragedy, the sound tree provides the atmosphere and brings together different voices, creating a shared space for the missing persons. The other eleven trees can be visited one by one in a trajectory chosen by the visitor. Each tree brings a story representing one aspect of the disappearance, hence the stories are fragmented, like remembrance itself.

The project, www.missingmonument.com, is available at this stage in English, Georgian, and Russian languages. Through this digital mode, it is meant to be accessible to all families of missing persons. The idea is also to sensitize the public about the issue of missing persons through their relatives' feelings and experience. Beyond this context, the project intends to pay tribute to families from all over the world, whose loved ones have gone missing in other situations, times, and places.

Tamuna Chabashvili is a visual artist based in Amsterdam and Tbilisi. She is known to the general public for such exhibitions as: The Corridors of Conflict. Abkhazia 1989-1995 (2019), The Fabric of the Everyday Life (2017) and Supra of Her Own (2014).  Her practice evolves around the topic of archive and traces.  Her works are based on mapping private stories and memories into visual and tactile narratives, questioning the ways in which “counter-memories” or “counter-stories” can fill up the space of silence.

Credits:
Project oversight: Jérôme Thuet
Artistic concept and realization: Tamuna Chabashvili
Concept and Research Assistant: Agnieszka Dudrak
Materials collection, interviews & transcripts: Jovana Kuzmanovic, Kristina Papazyan,
Sophio Elizbarashvili, Nana Tedeeva, Marina Tedeti
Translation and editing: Data Chigolashvili, Lali Pertenava, Marina Tedeti, Natalia Svintsova
Programming and web design: Lado Oniani
Sound editing and design: Levan Javakhishvili, Lika Machkhidze
Project & administration assistants: Nini Palavandishvili, Tamta Kupatadze
About Text written by Tamuna Chabashvili, Agnieszka Dudrak, edited by Jérôme Thuet
ICRC editorial coordination: Sophio Elizbarashvili
Special thanks to: Claire Jean, Vesna Madzoski, Adi Hollander