This week, Georgia is celebrating the 104th anniversary of its independence from the Russian Empire — a brief moment of optimism that was cut short when Soviet Russia occupied again in 1921.  

To mark the occasion, European Union flags are flying above all government buildings in the capital Tbilisi — the Georgian government, although criticized for its meek response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, did apply for EU membership two years ahead of schedule — and the city spent much of the week preparing for annual festivities. 

But away from all the usual fanfare, a small, privately organized exhibition in one of Tbilisi’s hip venues reflected the lack of historic reckoning that makes Georgia’s independence ever so fragile.

The idea for the exhibition was hatched after a group of Ukrainian journalists contacted their colleagues at Tabula magazine in Tbilisi. The Ukrainians asked them for evidence of atrocities committed by Russians in the early 1990s during the internecine conflict in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, when Georgian troops and paramilitaries, Abkhaz forces, local civilians, as well as fighters from the Russian Federation fought a brutal war strafed by massive human rights abuses on all sides.