Catalogue 'Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land' by Rob Hornstra

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[ Cover ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

Nature is steadily taking over a ballroom in the tourist resort of Pitsunda. In the time of the Soviet Union, Pitsunda and neighbouring Gagra were top tourist attractions.

[ 18 ] Pitsunda, Abkhazia

Brothers Zashrikwa (17) and Edrese (14) pose proudly with a Kalashnikov on the sofa in their aunt and uncleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. They live in the Kodori Gorge, a remote mountainous region on the border between Abkhazia and Georgia.

[ 16 ] Kuabchara, Abkhazia

View of the northern suburbs of Sukhumi, Abkhaziaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital. The worst fighting took place here during the Georgian-Abkhazian war in 1992-1993.

[ 1 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

The river Ghalidzga intersects the former mining town Tkvarcheli. Since the war the population has dropped from 21,744 to 4,786.

[1]

THE SOCHI PROJECT

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land: A portrait of the small, unknown country of Abkhazia, a lost Soviet paradise on the Black Sea.

‘Why are you late?’ asked God’s angels. ‘We had to attend to our guests,’ said the

“After God had created the Earth, he convened a great gathering of all the races that were to inhabit it. There, God and his angels would divide the Earth between the races. Each country that I give, said God, is a reflection of the national character. God knew his people and it quickly became evident where the English, Russians, Peruvians and other races would live. Satisfied, they concluded the gathering; the Earth was finished. But as they were preparing to return to heaven, their gaze fell on the Abkhazians, who had just arrived in great haste.

Abkhazia

‘All the countries have already been given away, except the one beautiful piece of land I kept for myself. I will bestow that on you.’ God gave his land and language to

But the angels stayed away. The Abkhazians continued to cook and every Friday, in a landscape of snow and rocks, they received hungry travellers. Until one day, perhaps centuries later, the sun broke through the clouds and spring arrived. As the snow slowly thawed, God’s emissaries finally visited the Abkhazians. And just like every Friday, the table was richly laden with food and drink. Then God arrived and spoke, ‘If only everyone could be like the Abkhazians.’

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Mikhail Yefremovich Zetunyan (89) during our second meeting in 2010. During the war with Georgia, he risked his life to sabotage the Georgian electricity supply. See also page [ 115 ]

[ 42 ] Eshera, Abkhazia

The many empty houses are offered for free to ethnic Abkhazians in the diaspora who are prepared to move back to Abkhazia. The government hopes in this way to fill the population gap.

[ 40 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Former theatre auditorium in Tkvarcheli. As a consequence of the chronic population decline few public buildings still function.

[ 38 ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

THE SOCHI PROJECT

As told by Anzor Mukba, Sukhumi 2010

But the angels were instantly won over by the Abkhazians and told God their story. God was implacable and sent the Abkhazians to a barren and desolate land. As punishment, they had to lay the table every Friday for God’s emissaries. And so it came about. Every Friday, the Abkhazians prepared the most delicious foods for God’s emissaries.

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the grateful Abkhazians who had proved to be so hospitable and courteous. When he left, God issued one more warning. ‘Everyone will desire your country like a beautiful young woman. It will be difficult to protect. If your descendants cannot protect it, they will melt away like snow in the spring. But if they do, it will remain theirs. Then it will be a beautiful country.”

Abkhazians. ‘We are sorry that we are late.’ ‘We were getting ready to go to God’s gathering when we met a poor man who was dressed in ragged clothing and hungry. We cooked for him, fed and clothed him and lost track of time.’ The other races laughed at the Abkhazians: ‘What kind of country do you think that you will get now?’

Thanks the isol our nat has rem pristine [ 179 ] Kristina Ozgan, Minister of Economic Affairs, Sukhumi, Abkhazia

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Tribute to war casualties in Gulripsh’s cultural centre.

[ 52 ] Gulripsh, Abkhazia

Pictures of Sener Gogua, a Turkish-Abkhazian member of the Abkhazian parliament and chairman of the Abkhazian Chamber of Commerce in Turkey: ‘I was on my summer holiday in Gagra when the war broke out. That’s when I joined the Abkhazian army.’

[ 49 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

The Turkish-Abkhazian Faruk was offered a house by the Abkhazian repatriation programme. He doesn’t have any money to renovate it.

[ 46 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Seventeen years on, empty houses are still filled with the relics of the former inhabitants.

[44 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

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s to lation ture mained e.

THE SOCHI PROJECT

Nature is steadily taking over a ballroom in the tourist resort of

[ 18 ] Pitsunda, Abkhazia

Brothers Zashrikwa (17) and Edrese (14) pose proudly with a Kalashnikov on the sofa in their aunt and uncle’s house. They live in the Kodori Gorge, a remote mountainous region on the border between Abkhazia and Georgia.

[ 16 ] Kuabchara, Abkhazia

View of the northern suburbs of Sukhumi, Abkhazia’s capital. The worst fighting took place here during the Georgian-Abkhazian war in 1992-1993.

[ 1 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Seventeen years on, empty houses are still filled with the relics of the former inhabitants.

The river Ghalidzga intersects the former mining town Tkvarcheli. Since the war the population has dropped from 21,744 to 4,786.

Tribute to war casualties in Gulripsh’s cultural centre.

[ 52 ] Gulripsh, Abkhazia

Pictures of Sener Gogua, a TurkishAbkhazian member of the Abkhazian parliament and chairman of the Abkhazian Chamber of Commerce in Turkey: ‘I was on my summer holiday in Gagra when the war broke out. That’s when I joined the Abkhazian army.’

[ 49 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

The Turkish-Abkhazian Faruk was offered a house by the Abkhazian repatriation programme. He doesn’t have any money to renovate it.

[ 46 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ 44 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ Cover ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

We meet Mikhail Yefremovich Zetunyan (88) for the first time in 2009. He has already built his coffin and gravestone. ‘I’m waiting to die,’ Mikhail says. ‘I fought in two World Wars. It hasn’t got any better.’

[ 115 ] Eshera, Abkhazia

Posters in the room of a refugee family in Tbilisi. Religion is the only thing that many refugees have to hold on to.

[ 105 ] Tbilisi, Georgia

Ochemchira’s deserted train station on the Moscow-Tbilisi line. Passenger transport was discontinued after the war. Russian troops used the line to transport goods to the Abkhazian-Georgian border.

[ 92 ] Ochemchira, Abkhazia

Tribute to war casualties in Tkvarcheli’s cultural centre.

[ 80 ] Tkuarchal, Abkhazia

Old family photo of Abkhazian

[ 200 ] Kayseri, Turkey

During the war groups of monkeys escaped from the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy. Although they have never been seen, caretakers claim that they are still hiding in the woods around Sukhumi.

[ 194 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Cook Roman serves us delicious plov with fresh parsley. Provisions, including food, are scarce and are mainly supplied by the prisoners’ relatives.

[ 191 ] Dranda, Abkhazia

Roman is a cook and prisoner in the Dranda prison. We are allowed to photograph him in the kitchen; the prisoners in the cell block have to stay out of sight.

[ 188 ] Dranda, Abkhazia

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Mikhail Yefremovich Zetunyan (89) during our second meeting in 2010. During the war with Georgia, he risked his life to sabotage the Georgian electricity supply. See also page [ 115 ]

[ 42 ] Eshera, Abkhazia

The many empty houses are offered for free to ethnic Abkhazians in the diaspora who are prepared to move back to Abkhazia. The government hopes in this way to fill the population gap.

[ 40 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Former theatre auditorium in Tkvarcheli. As a consequence of the chronic population decline few public buildings still function.

[ 38 ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

Pitsunda. In the time of the Soviet Union, Pitsunda and neighbouring Gagra were top tourist attractions.

[ 64 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ 66 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Sports lessons at the university in Sukhumi. The willingness - particularly among young people to take up arms again remains undiminished.

[ 70 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Milana Vozba is a student at the university in Sukhumi and works as a freelance translator. She learned her American English during an American-sponsored college year.

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Tribute to war casualties in Tkvarcheli’s cultural centre.

[ 80 ] Tkuarchal, Abkhazia

Sports lessons at the university in Sukhumi. The willingness - particularly among young people to take up arms again remains undiminished.

[ 70 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Tribute to war casualties in Sukhumi’s cultural centre. You see notice boards like these in every school and public building.

Milana Vozba is a student at the university in Sukhumi and works as a freelance translator. She learned her American English during an American-sponsored college year.

[ 66 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ 64 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Tribute to war casualties in Sukhumi’s cultural centre. You see notice boards like these in every school and public building.

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Head of Pathology and Physiology at the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy Tatyana Petrovna: ‘We used to train monkeys for space missions. Those facilities have been lost.’

[ 164 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Post Office Administrator Suzanna Kaldzhan (35). ‘You can’t stick Abkhazian stamps on your card abroad.’

[ 160 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Girl in the corridor of a former university campus in Tbilisi. Entire families share the student rooms, whole corridors share the sanitary facilities.

[ 134 ] Tbilisi, Georgia

See also page [ 42 ]

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THE SOCHI PROJECT

At a school in Tkvarcheli we meet Ainar (7). He wants to be the next president of Abkhazia.

[ 270 ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

Konstantin Gumba’s farewell letter: ‘...Whatever remained after the war in Abkhazia I divided between my loved ones, and with a clear conscience I find eternal peace.’

[ 266 ] Adzyubzha, Abkhazia

[ 256 ] Tbilisi, Georgia

immigrants in Turkey. None of them has ever been back to the Caucasus.

[ 179 ] Kristina Ozgan, Minister of Economic Affairs, Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ 188 ] Dranda, Abkhazia

[ 194 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Cook Roman serves us delicious plov with fresh parsley. Provisions, including food, are scarce and are mainly supplied by the prisonersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; relatives.

[ 191 ] Dranda, Abkhazia

Roman is a cook and prisoner in the Dranda prison. We are allowed to photograph him in the kitchen; the prisoners in the cell block have to stay out of sight.

[ 194 ]

[ 191 ]

[ 188 ]

Thanks the isol our nat has rem pristine

[ 52 ]

[ 49 ]

[ 46 ]

Tribute to war casualties in Gulripsh’s cultural centre.

[ 52 ] Gulripsh, Abkhazia

[ 49 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

The Turkish-Abkhazian Faruk was offered a house by the Abkhazian repatriation programme. He doesn’t have any money to renovate it.

[ 46 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Seventeen years on, empty houses are still filled with the relics of the former inhabitants.

[44 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

[ 44 ]

s to lation ture mained e.

THE SOCHI PROJECT

[ 200 ] Kayseri, Turkey Old family photo of Abkhazian immigrants in Turkey. None of them has ever been back to the Caucasus.

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[ 42 ]

[ 40 ]

Mikhail Yefremovich Zetunyan (89) during our second meeting in 2010. During the war with Georgia, he risked his life to sabotage the Georgian electricity supply. See also page [ 115 ]

[ 42 ] Eshera, Abkhazia

The many empty houses are offered for free to ethnic Abkhazians in the diaspora who are prepared to move back to Abkhazia. The government hopes in this way to fill the population gap.

[ 40 ] Sukhumi, Abkhazia

Former theatre auditorium in Tkvarcheli. As a consequence of the chronic population decline few public buildings still function.

[ 38 ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

THE SOCHI PROJECT

As told by Anzor Mukba, Sukhumi 2010

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The more we read about it, the more it enticed us, like a fairy tale; but a fairy tale tinged with black. On the flip side are the ruins, the pot-holed roads along which only the overgrown, concrete stairs of houses still stand, the rusted gates and car wrecks,

This coastal strip on the Black Sea was once the Riviera of the Soviet Union. Stalin had two dachas there. His successor, Khrushchev, swam in Pitsunda’s warm waters when the Communist Party in Moscow ousted him to make way for the party mastodon Brezhnev. Anyone in the Soviet Union who said they had received a voucher to go on holiday in Gagra, Pitsunda or Sukhumi had obviously done something to please the local party leadership. In the literature and Soviet guidebooks Abkhazia sounds like a dream, a subtropical oasis on the Black Sea, a promised land.

We knew almost nothing about Abkhazia when we visited for the first time in 2006. During our virtual travels through the country across maps on the internet, we discovered a fascinating landscape of mountains and rivers, with the majority of the towns spread out along the Black Sea. We read about snowy mountains of dizzying height that rise straight out of the sea, about endless beaches and lush gardens full of palms, tea bushes and citrus trees. We put the place names Sukhumi and Gagra in our mouths and savoured them like exotic morsels.

Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land: A portrait of the small, unknown country of Abkhazia, a lost Soviet paradise on the Black Sea.

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The fact that both Abkhazians and Georgians regard this same piece of land as their lost paradise makes the situation particularly bitter. The Abkhazians live in a devastated and impoverished country. During the war they deported 200,000 Georgians and in so doing went from being a vacation paradise to a totally isolated country. The 200,000 refugees live in equally impoverished conditions and are filled with nostalgia for their lost paradise. This cynical parallel was the reason for

Rob and I had travelled through troubled areas several times before, Rob as a photographer through remote regions of Russia, I as a journalist through Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In the Caucasus all this seemed to come together. The first trip to Abkhazia felt like a wild New Year’s Eve adventure. Recklessly, we travelled around this virgin country, but through the people we met, the memories of the war, the loneliness, devastation and isolation, it grabbed us by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Back in Georgia, we spoke to many refugees from Abkhazia who yearned for the country where they grew up.

the twisted remains of the horrific civil war that erupted here in the early ’90s. It reminded us of areas such as Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Kosovo, all small, violent and unviable provinces of artificially created countries. Abkhazia had been destroyed by civil war and forced into isolation, but had kept itself going for 15 years despite an international boycott and a tourism-based economy in a region without tourists.

In Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land we take you with us on our travels as we experienced them ourselves, struggling through layer upon layer of an increasingly irreconcilable conflict.

The book Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land is not an encyclopaedic history or analysis of the conflict or the geopolitics in the region. Rather, it is an ode to the Caucasus and its proud inhabitants. The Caucasus is an impenetrable maze of interests, conflicts and opinions. Their multiplicity can be confusing and repeatedly misleading, but in that schizophrenia lies the essence of the Caucasus. It is a region where every race has a creation story, as described by Anzor Mukba in this catalogue.

us to make four trips to Abkhazia and to record this obscure and painful conflict.

[ 256 ] Tbilisi, Georgia

In Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land, photographer Rob Hornstra and writer Arnold van Bruggen explore the unknown country of Abkhazia on the Black Sea. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia after a short, violent civil war in ’92-’93 and was recognised as independent in 2008 by Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and the atoll of Nauru. Hornstra and Van Bruggen have spent the last four years travelling through the country, seeing how it is slowly trying to claw its way out of isolation. They visited the refugees in Georgia and described the attempts made by the Abkhazian government to repopulate the empty, war-ravaged country with new immigrants.

This catalogue has been made possible with financial support from the Mondriaan Foundation.

Photography: © Rob Hornstra / INSTITUTE. Courtesy Flatland Gallery NL | Paris Text: © Arnold van Bruggen / Prospektor Translation: Cecily Layzell Design: Kummer & Herrman, Utrecht Printed by: Drukkerij Slinger, Alkmaar Paper: Munken Lynx Rough Print run: 750

This catalogue was produced in cooperation with the Freelens Gallery in Hamburg and accompanies the exhibition Empty land, Promised land, Forbidden land as part of The Sochi Project.

Colophon

At a school in Tkvarcheli we meet Ainar (7). He wants to be the next president of Abkhazia.

[ 270 ] Tkvarcheli, Abkhazia

Konstantin Gumba’s farewell letter: ‘...Whatever remained after the war in Abkhazia I divided between my loved ones, and with a clear conscience I find eternal peace.’

[ 266 ] Adzyubzha, Abkhazia

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