As part of this programme, Swiss artists created works that reflect on the political and social context of Abkhazia. In the video piece Inventing an Interval, Deirdre O’Leary filmed an abandoned Ministry of Defense sanatorium in the centre of Sukhum - once full of life, now frozen in time. Sonja Lippuner encased everyday objects in liquid wax, turning them into a time capsule of fossilised artefacts. Continuing his ‘From the Borderlands’ series, Aron Rossman-Kiss presented photographs of the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian borders. Accompanied by notes on the history of the conflicts, the work fuses geographic and historical landscapes.
Artists from the Abkhazian side focused on the themes of memory and cultural heritage. Tatiana Ergunova’s installation featured a suspended staircase and projection. The ephemeral, frozen-in-time steps evoke the ruined buildings of Sukhum — silent witnesses to an unresolved conflict. Konstantin Gretsov documented the dark, nearly imperceptible space beneath a monastery, where planned reconstruction had been halted. His work captures the timeless stasis in which the partially recognised state of Abkhazia exists.
The exhibition explored how time can be expressed through space. It also marked the founding of the cultural platform SKLAD_, defining its core values and objectives: horizontality, international exchange, community-building and civic dialogue.