Saïat Nova – New Hour
The exhibition Saïat Nova – New Hour, held at the Baroque complex of the Benedictine Bílá Hora Monastery in Prague, is structured around the ideas of polyphony, transliteration, and the coexistence of multiple cultures, spaces and times, drawing inspiration from the legacy of an 18th-century poet, Saïat Nova (c. 1722–1801), a court ashugh (minstrel) of King Erekle II of Georgia. The biography of this Tbilisi-based poet is known through a complex mix of inconsistent historical records and persistent legend. His innovation as a poet, however, is undisputed. His adopted name itself signals his approach: a combination of Saïat – a word with probable Arabic roots that means “hour” in Georgian – and the Latin Nova, meaning “new”. A poet of the new times, Saïat Nova composed in multiple languages at once: Georgian, Armenian, Persian, and Azerbaijani. He pioneered a distinct visual and sonic method, transcribing Azeri poems with the Georgian alphabet or at times merging the unique scripts of Georgian and Armenian within a single poem. Through this practice he also developed a visual relationship to writing that anticipated the experiments of concrete poetry by centuries.
The third edition of Ora et lege exhibition project takes the multilingual poetry of this visionary as a point of departure. The exhibition features a selection of pre-existing and newly commissioned works, as well as a rich performance programme, with each contribution resonating in its own way with Saïat Nova’s legacy. The participating artists, through their own visual, textual, sonic or performative practices methodologically or thematically aspire to what can be learned from this 18th-century internationalist visionary.
Ana Gzirishvili (b. 1992, Tbilisi, Georgia) recreates one of her pre-existing works, Locale, a site-specific sculpture assembled from second-hand women’s handbags. Acting as an elegant intervention into the space, the work creates a polyphony of unknown female voices. We hear a choir performing in a video, The Ghost (2023), by Lina Lapelytė̇ (b. 1984, Kaunas, Lithuania) installed in one of the side chapels next to the relics of St Felician. Conceived for the exhibition, Maia Naveriani (b. 1966, Tbilisi, Georgia) creates a neon installation of her drawing, Word of Mouth, incorporating text addressing both written and sonic experience and the meanings it embraces when changing contexts. Adéla Součková (b. 1985, Prague, Czech Republic) in The Polyphony of Times in a Single Moment is interested in intersection points between the animist and modern, pagan and religious, or spiritual and technological. A series of mono color digital prints of artist’s drawings on cotton rhythmically follow one another in a hallway of the monastery as if racing thoughts, incorporating various imagery of popular symbols interlaced with short poetic texts. Marie Tučková (b. 1994, Prague, Czech Republic) in her sound installation activates the historic well in the monastery courtyard. As if giving voice to the subterranean waters underneath the architecture, her delicate intervention Would you drink me when I am rotten? addresses questions of power, control and memory, looking at the water not merely as a natural resource, but also in terms of its historical and symbolic meaning.
Performances and readings by Julie Béna, Sophie Jung, Deva Schubert & Chihiro Araki and rivermoans open and close the exhibition on 30 August and 28 September 2025. Julie Béna (b. 1982, Paris, France) reads her latest poems 13, written over the summer before the opening after her visit to Georgia. Sophie Jung (b. 1982, Luxembourg, Luxembourg) reads her new script written in relation to the context of the exhibition and various objects found at the site. In their performance Glitch Choir, Deva Schubert and Chihiro Araki (Berlin, Germany) transfer the digital concept of the glitch into the analogue realm of the human voice and body. Focusing on the deconstruction and re-composition of an Italian lamento – musical genre of mourning, Glitch Choir, as a feminist practice, seeks a polyphonic expression that finds strength in failure and connection in cacophony. Further activating her sound installation, Marie Tučková under the name of rivermoans performs her poly-vocal composition in real time, portraying wells not merely as sources of water but as openings into the earth, connecting us to the underground and, metaphorically, to memory, loss, and resistance.
One of the central aspects of the exhibition is a curated library in the form of a dining table, conceived by the artist and product designer Lado Lomitashvili (b. 1994, Tbilisi, Georgia). It takes root in the Georgian traditional feast “Supra”, often led by poets while accompanied by a polyphonic choir. The table hosts a collection of publications selected by various independent bookshops, publishing houses and researchers. Dominated by the variety of languages, the publications focus on the ideas of polyphony, internationalism, and other topics explored within written text, be it poetry, fiction, critical thought and other.
The exhibition is organized by the Educational and Cultural Centre Broumov as part of the long-term project Ora et lege (Pray and Read), which opens up a dialogue between contemporary art and the essence of the Benedictine order and the Catholic Church in general. The project focuses on exploring text and its meaning in contemporary visual culture and religious thought.
Elene Abashidze, exhibition curator
