ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture presents The Invisible Hand of my Father (2018) by Georgian artist Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze.

Gagoshidze’s video installation combines 3D animation, drone panoramas, photographic documentation and oral testimony to tell the story of his father, a car industry manager who migrated from Georgia to Portugal to become construction worker when the 2008 financial crisis started to tarnish the global economy. A labor accident took his hand and left him with a prosthetic arm which he avoids to use due to its weak performance. Gagoshidze’s multilayered storytelling improvises on the relation between the ghostly role of the “invisible hand of economy” and the material specificity of the severed limb. A digital reconstruction of the father’s arm floats in the angelic space of capitalist economy while the faulty prosthetic becomes the father’s weird robotic friend, communicating through purposeless spasms.

About Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze

In 2001-2007 he studied at the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts where he received his MA. After he graduated from Tbilisi State Academy of Arts he continued his studies at KABK in The Hague. Shortly after, in 2012, he joined the New Media class of Prof. Dr. Hito Steyerl at the University of Arts in Berlin, where he received Absolvent and completed his Meisterschüler. Gago currently lives and works in Berlin.

ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture is an initiative of Athens School of Fine Art’s Labs 11 & 12, powered by Onassis Foundation and the City of Athens Development and Destination Management Agency.