PERSONAL PROJECTS: House Divided (Shifting Borders): Shifting Borders

Valia Valishvili, 88, the widow of the late Data Vanishvili, who lives on the side of Georgia's de facto breakaway region of South Ossetia, in the village of Khurvaleti, Georgia, September 28, 2021. Data Vanishvili, then in his eighties, became a symbol of this fearful frontier existence after he, his wife and son woke up in 2013 to find a barbed-wire fence had been erected in the night, putting their home on the Ossetian side of the boundary. He became well-known in Georgia for defiantly staying put and speaking out publicly. Despite the risks, he would cross the boundary to get his pension and to buy food. He sometimes passed money to old neighbours through the fence to get him bread. He was once jailed after going across to vote. On his death bed at the age of 88, his final words to his wife were a plea not to abandon their home. {quote}Do not leave the house, do not go anywhere, sit by the stove, the Georgians will help you,{quote} his family recall him saying. He was buried in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Shifting Borders

Valia Valishvili, 88, the widow of the late Data Vanishvili, who lives on the side of Georgia's de facto breakaway region of South Ossetia, in the village of Khurvaleti, Georgia, September 28, 2021. Data Vanishvili, then in his eighties, became a symbol of this fearful frontier existence after he, his wife and son woke up in 2013 to find a barbed-wire fence had been erected in the night, putting their home on the Ossetian side of the boundary. He became well-known in Georgia for defiantly staying put and speaking out publicly. Despite the risks, he would cross the boundary to get his pension and to buy food. He sometimes passed money to old neighbours through the fence to get him bread. He was once jailed after going across to vote. On his death bed at the age of 88, his final words to his wife were a plea not to abandon their home. "Do not leave the house, do not go anywhere, sit by the stove, the Georgians will help you," his family recall him saying. He was buried in the breakaway region of South Ossetia.