Lilit Matevosyan’s project Even Boxwood Does Not Remember continues the dialogue between the artist and SKLAD_ about archives, trauma, and memory that began with the exhibition Revisiting the Archives in 2018. Even Boxwood Does Not Remember is part of Matevosyan’s long-term artistic research devoted to the folklore and history of the indigenous peoples of the North-Western Caucasus. The artist focuses on what lies behind the “picture-postcard” façade of the Caucasian Black Sea coast, imposed on the region during the Soviet era.

Since 2021, she has been running the project Resort Business, in which she collects reportage chronicles and personal archives of Sochi residents from the 1950s to the 1990s. Digitized and published online, these materials reveal the everyday life of Sochi and its people as it unfolds alongside seasonal tourism. In 2023, with the support of the Field Research program of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Matevosyan initiated a new project entitled An Island Surrounded by Land. In this work, she turns to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the North-Western Caucasus — primarily the Shapsugs — who lived in the region long before it became part of the Russian Empire following the end of the Caucasian War in 1864.

In Even Boxwood Does Not Remember, the artist develops one aspect of this broader investigation and focuses on the history of Colchis boxwood — an endemic plant indigenous to the region. The project includes an exhibition of the same name, a guided walk through the botanical garden, and a collage

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