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Conceptual Series

Ika Trey

Photographer

Ika Trey

The Matter of the Early 2000s

The way I remember my childhood is fragmented and vague. There’s an overarching fog of them from which I retrieve piercing glimpses of spaces, objects and different activities that are as vivid as the present.

These works serve as collages of childhood; attempts to piece memories together while celebrating their fragmentary nature. To embrace the duality of this concept, I created a series of miniature surrealist photographs that dive into some of the more delicate memories from my life and community and extract key signifiers of them.

Some of the most sincere communal spaces I’ve encountered have been classrooms and hallways. These spaces became the foundation for many of my memories and cultural development in post-Soviet, urban Tbilisi. Working on this series was one of the ways I’ve stayed in touch with and explored my past while living in the United States for over eight years.

Ika Trey

Irakli Tchrelashvilii (Ika Trey) was born in 1997 in the Republic of Georgia. Even though the family had a close relationship with artmaking, the consideration of art as a career for him wasn’t even an option in a post-Soviet, crippled country. Immigration to the United States became a pivotal point in his life where Ika decided to devote his life to artmaking. Currently, he is finishing the BFA program at Rutgers University specializing in sculpture and photography. His experiences growing up and leaving his homeland strongly influenced his work which revolves around ideas and emotions such as longing, intimacy, habitat and spatial experience. Some of his achievements as an emerging artist include a gallery award from Mason Gross School of the Arts in the show “Above and Beyond” (2019) and the group exhibition “LOVE 2020” at Columbia University alongside Jon Kessler, Edward Mapplethorpe, and other artists.