In 2015 we created the cultural center SKLAD in Sukhum city in the republic of Abkhazia with my friend Asida Butba. This center was open for 3.5 years (2015-2019). SKLAD was an independent cultural institution with an innovative approach in a specific place. I was a co-founder, exhibition curator, and art manager of this center. I managed contemporary art exhibitions, film screenings, an urban forum, discussions, master classes and other cultural events. Many events were supported and collaborated with the Swiss Artasfoundation. There were summer schools for students, exhibitions of contemporary art, and master classes. The center was closed in 2019. All these years he worked in the warehouse of the Abkhaz Drama Theater. Two years later, after the pandemic, the center was opened again in a new location.

As part of the Curator's Initiative project, artasfoundation supported two young curators from Abkhazia¹: Asida Butba and Tanya Ergunova. They were invited onto a research trip to Switzerland. In August 2015 they visited Swiss artists' studios, museums, exhibitions and free art spaces in Zurich, Basel, Bern, Môtiers, Lausanne and Geneva. After this intensive journey, they selected seven artists to be exhibited in February 2016 in an exhibition in Sukhum/i that they curated.

Raumlabor went with a small team to find out what public space means in this ambivalent situation. Invited by SKLAD, an independ art and culturel space and together with artasfoundation, the Swiss foundation for Art in Regions of Conflict, we developed first strategic ideas and a set of tools to approriate the city's destiny.