SERI(a) 1: The Silk Museum

SERI(a) 1: The Silk Museum is the first in the State Silk Museum’s new series of eponymous publications. Historically, the museum’s predecessor—the Caucasian Sericulture Station—was a space for scientific research and publishing, supporting educational field programmes and projects. SERI(a) therefore resonates with the Sericulture Station’s historical experience and is at the same time a wonderful means of presenting the museum from different angles to a wider audience.

Artist Olaf Nicolai responded to an invitation to work in the museum’s collections by proposing the development of a platform for the institution’s various publishing activities. The three works published here do indeed focus upon different aspects of the Silk Museum. The first of them is an article on the history of the Caucasian Sericulture Station and the museum’s architecture, discussed in its wider urban and historical context by architect Nino Tchatchkhiani. This is followed by a phantasmagorical story by Olaf Nicolai and photographs by Giovanna Silva.

Olaf Nicolai, born 1962 in Halle / Saale, is a visual artist based in Berlin. Since 2011 he has been a professor of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich