Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze
Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze (b. 1983, Kutaisi, USSR/Georgia) is an artist working with film, animation, and installation. He studied at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts (2007), Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, The Hague (2010), and the Universität der Künste, Berlin (2016). His practice investigates the sociopolitical conditions of moving images, focusing on the impact of global capitalism, labour migration, and poverty on post-Soviet societies. His work has been presented at the National Art Center, Tokyo (2024); SculptureCenter, New York (2024); the Taipei Biennial (2023); PACT Zollverein (2022); the Luleå Biennial (2020); the Kunsthalle Wien (2020); steirischer herbst (2019); Konsthall Mint ABF (2019); and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (2019).
It’s Just a Single Swing of a Shovel, 2015
Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze’s video It’s Just a Single Swing of a Shovel centres on Hayastan Shakarian, a 78-year-old Armenian woman living in Georgia, who unintentionally cut through a fibre-optic cable on 28 March 2011 while scavenging for scrap metal, shutting down the entire internet access for three countries. The video interprets this event as a new form of hacking by Shakarian, as she delivers media criticism by exposing the unreliability and fragility of the infrastructure with a single swing of a shovel.