Armén Rotch & Gilda RG

Tea is both the subject of the artists’ work and their medium: their large-scale installations incorporate hundreds of teabags in subtly variegated monochrome shades. The duo explores tea as a global commodity that has shaped trade over the centuries, and also as a humble, overlooked daily essential that is consumed the world over.

The amount of time each teabag steeps for subtly alters its shade, so the passing time is marked not only in shifting colours, but also in the sheer volume of teabags – a hint at the meditative quotidian ritual of tea-making. Rotch and RG have described each teabag as a “breath” of the person who drank from it, using this comparison as a way to bring to light what – and who – is unseen.

Armén Rotch (1955, Armenia) and Gilda RG (1963, Armenia) both live and work in Paris. They have been collaborating since 2006 and have exhibited globally, including at Contemporary Istanbul (2018), Douai Biennial, France (2015), Modern Art Museum of Yerevan (2007), and the Musée de l’Orangerie du Luxembourg, Paris (2006).