The Framed Sea: Illusory Photos That Serve As A Metaphor For Social Media’s Artificiality

In the series, Kiknavelidze constructs staged scenes of a picturesque ocean through various windows and doors. The openings are real sites photographed in Berlin, and the ocean is the Black Sea in Georgia, located 3000 kilometers from Germany. Kiknavelidze thereby creates a visual connection between where he lives presently—Berlin, Germany, and where he is from originally—Batumi, Georgia. “To play with this unexpected juxtaposition is a metaphor for a condition of both distance and closeness with ourselves, at the same time,” Kiknavelidze explains to IGNANT.

The series focuses on perspective and illusion, two concepts that he also believes play an important role in social media’s construction. “Social media is a virtual exhibition space for lifestyles, which are often depicted as an interface between what we are, and what we want to be,” he says. “This way of seeking for perfectionism is demonstrated in my series: the framing shows the views to the same sea. And while it appears real, it can also be disbelieved,” he explains. The same is true of social media. “I think we’ve perfectly customized social media into a medium that illustrates an illusory nature of us,” he states, “and not the other way around”.