Types du Caucase
2013-2015
Installation, 91 x (ca. 14 x 9 cm).
Materials: paper
Collection: M HKA / Donation of the artist, 2015 (Inv. no. S0504_3).
Types du Caucase is a set of 19th-century postcards from Taus Makhacheva’s personal archive. The life and customs of the peoples of the Caucasus appear on postcards as an exoticized representation of the Other. The captions on the postcards are written in Russian and French, which designates them as being for the members of the elites of that time. Examples of ‘popularised ethnography’ of the Russian Empire, such ‘picturesque’ photographs are the product of orientalism that served as an instrument of colonial policy.