Our relationship with domesticated animals and our attitudes toward and treatment of them is complicated and often contradictory. The first species of animal believed to have been domesticated by humans (around 15,000 years ago), is the domestic dog’s ancestor; the Grey Wolf. Retaining many of their evolved instincts, domesticated dogs are born into an anthropocentric world, shaped according to our needs; one far removed from the world their ancestral relative’s would have been familiar. Like all animals domesticated since the dog, they are forever innocently trapped inside a determined nebulous space that we have created and assumed dominion; their experience, at our mercy, their evolved instincts and expressions curtailed. They exist within the dark walls of extenuated uncertainty and confusion.

Whilst on a three-month artist residency in Tbilisi in 2021, I encountered a street dog. She, like all the street dogs, roamed the old town on her own, sustained by the kindness of the Tbilisi people, and the tourists she encountered each day. She followed myself and friends closely, sticking by our side, before departing to scavenge for food in some bin’s midway down the long-cobbled road we were descending. The look of expectations in her eyes when l stroked her back stayed with me for the rest of that day. I wondered if she had ever had a ‘home'? an 'owner'? and if so, whether she'd been abandoned to the city? (a common occurrence in Georgia), was her 'owner' kind toward her? Did she prefer life now or before?

The street dogs of Tbilisi roam the city, living in a perpetual, simultaneous contradiction: belonging everywhere and nowhere, to no one and everyone.

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Disclaimer:

All animal voices were recorded in Tbilisi, except for additional samples of new-born puppies, sourced online. No animals were harmed, or their suffering incidentally recorded, for the making of this work.