Vajiko Chachkhiani
Life Track (2015) Video Installation

Presented in the Old Paradise Gardens – a former burial ground – this beautiful and unnerving video is a portrait of human existence under confinement. Filmed from the exterior of a hospice where the terminally ill are cared for, the video features a middle-aged man looking out of a window from a darkened room within the complex. His stare intense, it’s unclear whether he’s confronting the viewer’s own intrusive gaze or looking out in a desire to make contact. Functioning as a memento mori, the video presents a ghostly reminder of one’s own mortality. At the same time, it is also a portrayal of human resilience – the ability to persist and endure beyond the constraints of our immediate circumstances.

Supported by the Goethe-Institut London.

Vajiko Chachkhiani (b.1985) works with sculpture, film and installation to transform and displace real world objects. Simultaneously poetic and haunting, his work meditates on the complex interiority of human beings, the symptomatic effects of psychology and history, and the ways in which the living present separates itself from the past. Chachkhiani represented Georgia in the 57th Venice Art Biennale.

Old Paradise Gardens: originally offered to the parish by Archbishop Thomas Tenison of Canterbury as a burial ground, the site was purchased by a local gardener for £120 in 1703. After years of decay, it was transformed into a public garden in 1884, when the original gravestones on site were moved to the boundary walls.