Bouillon Group

Orthodox
2015-2021

In 2015, two German artists, Nora Al Badri and Nicolas Nelles, offered to collaborate with us. They visited Tbilisi for four weeks during that same year. Bouillon Group presented their (Religious) Aerobics in “Kamikaze Loggia” – the Georgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2013. This particular work, which was researching the current issues of Georgia in the last 30 years, became an inspiration for joint creation.

During the project’s development, members of the Bouillon Group, Natalia Vatsadze, Konstantine Kitiashvili, and Ekaterine Ketsbaia, baptized Nicolas Nelles in an orthodox baptism ritual and gave him the Christian name “Nikoloz.” The group also constructed two, two-meter crosses known as St. Nino’s cross.  On October 25th of the same year, one of the crosses was anonymously placed on Amaghleba Street in Tbilisi late at night, resulting in the blockage of the road. Later the patrol police took the cross away in an unknown direction. The location of the cross is unknown to this day. The second cross, however, was kept in Bouillon’s studio for six years. 

On August 28, 2021,  Bouillon members placed a cross in front of Parliament next to the cross erected on July 5th. On the same day, at about 5 pm, the patrol police took the cross in an unknown direction. The location of the cross remains unknown. The Project is a video documentation of laying of the cross, baptism of Nicolas Nell and (Religious) Aerobics.

The project was screened in Berlin in 2015 under the title un.or.tho.dox.