“The ban only heightened their allure, sweeter than forbidden fruit. Soviet youth became obsessed, determined to get their hands on a pair of jeans by any means necessary. Smuggling thrived. Ever so often, a genuine pair of American jeans would appear among the contraband trickling in from across the globe. In those days, every pair of jeans was believed to be American. Because Soviet propaganda so passionately vilified the United States, many of us came to believe that happiness existed wherever denim was abundant. We dreamed about those jeans, not just the fabric itself, but the world they seemed to represent.”

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to present Jeans Generation, inspired by Dato Turashvili’s novel, which recounts the true story of a group of young Georgians who hijacked a plane in an attempt to flee the Soviet Union. The exhibition brings together fifteen artists whose works investigate the psychology of daydreaming as a form of resistance and self-preservation.

Building on this historical framework, the exhibition examines how the capacity to dream operates under constraint, political, social, or psychological. It approaches dreaming as an adaptation, a conscious method of maintaining agency when external freedoms are limited. Within such conditions, imagination functions as a site of endurance and quiet defiance.

Positioned as a “how-to manual”, Jeans Generation studies the mechanics of this process. How do individuals construct inner worlds when external ones become untenable, and how does imagination operate as both a coping mechanism and creative methodology. Referencing the concept of maladaptive daydreaming, the exhibition expands the conversation, framing fantasy not as a dysfunction but as evidence of collective longing.

Jeans Generation rests upon five conceptual pillars — spirituality, language, cognition, hope, and pain — each representing a vital dimension of the dreaming psyche. Spirituality anchors the exhibition’s search for meaning, positioning faith and intuition as forms of inner navigation. Language functions as a bridge tracing how expression shapes the limits of desire. Cognition reveals the architecture of daydreaming itself, while hope and pain serve as a catalyst, the condition from which the need to dream arises.

Through painting, sculpture, and installation, the participating artists explore the boundaries of consciousness and control, proposing that the act of dreaming, even in its most fragile form, remains an essential expression of human agency.