Constructed out of steel rings, two giant human figures – one male , one female – stand on the seafront. Periodically, the two halves of this eerie outsize couple, each eight metres tall, move slowly towards each other. Briefly, the rings interlock and the figures fuse. Then, inexorably, they glide apart again.
Forever united, forever divided, this pair of metal lovers has since its installation in 2010 become one of the best-loved, and most photographed, landmarks in the resort and port of Batumi on the Black Sea coast of Georgia. As I watched their stately dance of coupling and parting, a steady stream of young visitors (several head scarved women among them) posed for phone snaps in front of the mobile artwork. Once ruled by medieval Georgian dynasties, then by the Ottoman, Russian, and Soviet empires, Batumi now welcomes crowds of tourists and investors from across its region. Already a hub for Black Sea trade and naval power, the port became the terminus of the Transcaucasian Railway in 1883 and, in 1907, the end-point of the oil pipeline from Baku on the Caspian and a crucial conduit for Tsarist (and later Soviet) black gold. In the old town, neo-classical villas, churches and palaces remember Imperial Russia’s heyday as colonial overlord. But no one culture has ever monopolised Batumi; today, Muslims still account for about a quarter of the city’s people. Lined with show-off hotels and apartment blocks built by Emirati or Turkish developers, the seaside promenades increasingly resemble a lusher offshoot of Dubai.
Georgian artist Tamara Kvesitadze originally created her ‘kinetic sculpture’ for the Venice Biennale. In Batumi, its booming popularity as an Instagram-friendly backdrop has made it her best-known piece. ‘The main message my work conveys,’ she has said, ‘is that being together is possible for only a little time’. Desire endures, but union does not. On this spot where conflict and rivalry has for centuries pushed people together and then pulled them apart (across the Black Sea’s waters, Russia wages war in Ukraine), this monumental but tender image of fragile longing touches hearts as public sculpture seldom does.
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