"Arranged in a perfect circle, thirteen identical aquariums brim with motionless water; only one holds a living fish. Its calm movement ruptures the symmetry, activating the stillness around it. In this minimalist mise-en-scène the artist invites symbolic, psychological, theological and existential readings, transforming the Last Supper into a paradox of visibility and confinement."
- Dr. Nana Kipiani, Art Historian, 2025
With 13 Aquariums & a Fish, Tbilisi-based conceptualist Lia Bagrationi reconstructs a secular, achromatic version of the Last Supper. Thirteen glass tanks—identical in scale and set on white plinths—form a perfect circle under museum lighting. Twelve contain only still water and a submerged trio of white ceramic utensils (plate, knife, cup); the thirteenth adds a single live goldfish that drifts through the transparent boundary like a quiet oracle. The work’s stripped geometry recalls Minimalism, yet its latent iconography opens instantly onto Georgian Orthodox symbolism: the solitary fish (Ichthys) for Christ, the empty vessels for an unfulfilled Eucharist.
Bagrationi’s installation pivots on paradox. The aquarium is both container and display case, both church and cell. Water sustains life while immobilising it; glass exposes the sacred while shielding it. Kipiani describes the scene as an “entropic table of sorrow: an unrealised Eucharist that waits in silence” where substance is replaced by symbol and symbol by absence. The theological reading soon slides into an existential one: what does it mean to be mapped, illuminated and watched, yet utterly enclosed? In today’s surveillance cultures, the lone fish can figure the isolated self, ringed by twelve mirror-selves—latent, potential, but dormant.
By draining the composition of colour—everything is water-clear or porcelain-white—Bagrationi links her project to the achromatic “zero degree” pursued by Duchamp, Gober and Agnes Martin. The neutrality of hue becomes a tabula rasa onto which multiple narratives may be projected: theological allegory, psychological diagram, or sociopolitical allegory of post-Soviet Georgia’s stalled transitions. Art Foundation Anagi’s presentation, its first in Georgia, aligns with the foundation’s mission to bring exported or overlooked local practices back into critical view. 13 Aquariums & a Fish thus operates less as a fixed tableau than as a thinking model: circular, silent, and perpetually activated by the viewer’s gaze.