Temple

A sacred space — a house of god, a house of the monkey. A temple.

The idea began one night in India. Looking at the moon, calling her "my moon." In Georgian, chemi mtvare — "my moon" — sounds like maimuni, the word for monkey. That phonetic accident turned into an icon: soft, strange, and full of meaning. A quiet myth unfolded from a simple word.

There's also the Georgian word mymoonoba — a playful term for doing nonsense, joyful absurdity, beautiful bullshit. That energy became a kind of spiritual practice. Life is absurd. That's the truth I believe in. And the monkey — with her chaos, humor, wisdom — became a goddess, a force to follow.

The moon's pull on the earth gave me a vision: a monkey seated on the ground, not grounded, but ruling. A feminine power resting lightly on the earth while shaping everything around it. The monkey icon inside this work is called Dark Side of the Moon — the second in an ongoing series of Monkey Icons.

Temple is more than a sculpture. It's a space — built like a church inside an abandoned house near Tbilisi. A ruin transformed with offerings, altars, symbols, and absurd rituals. A house of devotion for something that doesn't need to be explained.