Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

Work exhibited in the Trade Fair Palace:

The Invisible Hand of My Father / 2018 / video (24 min) / courtesy of the artist

Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (lives in Berlin, b. Kutaisi (Georgia), 1983) tells the story of his father Nuzgari. He was an educated man, a car-factory manager. During the economic crisis in Georgia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had to search for a new job. The invisible hand of the market replaced the collective hand of the workers. Like many other people from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus he had to go to Western Europe to work on construction sites. His hands became his main working tools. The working conditions were bad, there was no permission to work, and due to an accident he lost one of his hands. The film is a portrait of the father, but also of the lost worker’s hand. The father works in his garden where the prosthetic hand sometimes helps him, at the same time it never fully became part of the body. The artist animates the lost hand and speaks through an unequal economic system that forces people to work in exhausting conditions. In economic theory, there is an image of the invisible hand of the market – a powerful force that regulates the demand and the supply of various goods. For the artist, the invisible hand of the market and the lost hand of the worker make a comment on poverty, work accidents, and labor migration.

In his artistic practice, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze deals with the moving image, the political background to its production and distribution, and its sociopolitical significance. His works have been shown internationally in various exhibitions and institutions such as: The National Art Center Tokyo (2024), SculptureCenter New York (2024), Taipei Biennial (2023), PACT Zollverein (2022), Luleå Biennial (2020), Kunsthalle Wien (2020), steirischer herbst (2019), Konsthall Mint ABF (2019), and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2019).