Tate Modern Film

Sophio Medoidze: Kotori

7 December 2022 at 18.30–20.30

A man is seen with a white horse in a mountain village.

Sophio Medoidze, Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) 2022, film still. Courtesy the artist

Programme
Biographies
Accessiblity

Join the premiere of the artist’s first feature-length film, Let Us Flow

Artist Sophio Medoidze presents the premiere of her debut feature Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) together with her previous short film Xitana (ხითანა) .

Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) is a two-part project that explores the isolated mountainous region of Tusheti, in Northeast Georgia. The film considers the importance of ritual, the maintenance of community ties, and how modernisation and migration are transforming rural landscapes.

Shot over a period of several years, it uses inventive recording and editing techniques, sound composition and voiceover narration to offer a nuanced perspective of a culture where ancestral shrines are only accessible to men. Medoidze makes visible the symbolic and physical division of sacred spaces within the community and upends instances of performative masculinity that play out in those seasonal rituals, involving horse riding. A female artist native to Georgia, Medoidze's works engage with a plurality of voices and shifting languages to reveal the community’s varied perspectives, and how its members together grapple with the tensions between past and present.

Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) will be preceded by the artist’s 2019 short film Xitana (ხითანა), which captures young Tushetians shifting aspirations during Atengenoba, the region’s traditional summer festivities.

Drawing from the symbolism of kotori bread, a round staple dish commonly baked by women in the Caucasus mountains, these two works together offer a non-linear exploration of the Tush community. Its shape, which alludes to the sun’s circular movement, hints at the transience of nature as well as the cyclicality of time. For Medoidze, the concept of kotori evokes the looping sequences in her films, as well as her recurring travels to the Tusheti mountains

Programme

Introduction by the artist

Xitana (ხითანა) 2019, HD video, colour, sound, 6 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) Part 1 2022, 4K video, colour, sound, 22 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
Let Us Flow (ვიდინოთ) Part 2 2022, 4K video, colour, sound, 41 min, Tushetian dialect of Georgian and Georgian with English subtitles
Conversation between Adam Pugh and the artist

Two green-tinted images of a man riding a horse are overlaid on each other. — Sophio Medoidze, Xitana (ხითანა) 2019, film still. Courtesy the artist

Sophio Medoidze (b. 1978, Georgia, formerly USSR) is a filmmaker and visual artist currently living in London. Her practice embraces film, photography, writing and sculpture and explores the poetic potential of uncertainty. The desire for a community (both actual and imaginary) drives her narrative work, as she questions the interplay of the rural and urban, languages and translations, as well as gender politics and dynamics.

Adam Pugh (b. 1977, UK) is a curator, writer and designer based in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he previously ran the artists’ moving image programme Projections at Tyneside Cinema. As a writer, he contributes regularly to Art Monthly and has taught, delivered programmes and talks, and served on international juries for institutions and events worldwide.

All Tate Modern entrances are step-free. You can enter via the Turbine Hall and into the Natalie Bell Building on Holland Street, or into the Blavatnik Building on Sumner street.

The Starr Cinema is on Level 1 of the Natalie Bell Building. There are lifts to every floor of the Blavatnik and Nathalie Bell buildings. Alternatively you can take the stairs.

There is space for wheelchairs and a hearing loop is available.

All works screened in the Starr Cinema have English captions.

Fully accessible toilets are located on every floor on the concourses.
A quiet room is available to use in the Natalie Bell Building on Level 4.
Ear defenders can be borrowed from the Ticket desks.

To help plan your visit to Tate Modern, have a look at our visual story. It includes photographs and information about what you can expect from a visit to the gallery.

Download Tate Modern map PDF