Abstract:

The paper explores the late imperial and early Soviet collecting and curatorial practices in the mountainous region of Georgia known as Upper Svaneti. This region is often imagined as an archaic space, preserving unique artifacts of Christian and Islamic art, all of them typically categorized as Church treasures. Inspired by Connal McCarthy’s central argument in his monograph on the history of colonial cultures of display, I aim to demonstrate that while collecting in the Caucasus was a colonial project, it was a multi-dimensional and contested endeavor and 'never an unchallenged tool of settler rule" (McCarthy, 2007). Questioning the traditional dichotomy of center vs. periphery, I argue that local agency was enacted through a network of actors, both human and non-human, pushing for or evading the museification of ancient treasures. According to Alfred Gell, art objects possess agency by acting as mediators in social interactions. While objects do not have intentions as humans do, they can still exert influence over human action (Gell, 1998). Furthermore, the supposition that material artifacts significantly contribute to the exercise of power, as Timothy Mitchell argues in his famous Colonising Egypt (Mitchell, 1988), could be applicable not only to the colonizers but also to the colonized. Here I examine the generation of nationally minded intellectuals, ethnographers, and historians from Tiflis who collaborated with imperial academic institutions surveying the region. I look at their collecting activities, as well as the engagement of various layers of Svan society that 'attempted to steer the process towards their ends” (McCarthy, 2007). In my analysis, I rely on a wide variety of sources, including archival documentation from Tbilisi and Mestia (Upper Svaneti), letters from family archives, reproductions from published catalogs, travelogues, my field notes, and a specific collection of objects assembled and preserved at the Church of Lagurka of Kala community in Upper Svaneti.