In the exhibition of her paintings, the artist and set designer, Tatia Gogeti Shohat (Tatia Shohet Gogati), born in Georgia and graduated with honors from the Academy of Art in Tbilisi, presents a body of work consisting of series of paintings and drawings in oil colors, acrylics, oil-based colored markers on canvas, plywood boards, and papers. The paintings are abundant and colorful, featuring shades of red, light blue, green, and black. They exude passion, wildness, and themes of death. The main motifs in most of the artworks are the female genital organ and the pomegranate fruit, which in Jewish tradition symbolizes femininity, reproduction, and abundance. Other prominent motifs include female nudity, surgical and sewing tools, pieces of meat, slaughtering lamb, cuts, wounds, genitals, and bleeding organs. The paintings predominantly feature male figures engaged in ritual actions such as surgery and sewing, conducting a choir, slaughtering and eating. Some paintings depict masculine aspects, while others show a woman’s face and unclear figures of men emerging from earlier layers of the painting.
The basis of the exhibition includes video documentation of surgical operations in the field of urogynecology, a field combining gynecology and urology, focusing on operations on male or female genitalia. Additionally, the artist drew inspiration from the film “The Color of Pomegranates” by Georgian-Armenian director Sergey Parjanov, based on the life story of the 18th-century Armenian wandering poet Sayat Nova. Parjanov’s cinematic poetics resonate with Gogeti’s childhood memories, creating a world where the earth is seen as a mother, echoing the concept of the earth goddess in various cultures.
Parjanov’s film, a source of inspiration for Gogeti Shohat’s work, features stationary, non-mobile camera shots capturing various figures in action, akin to a relationship between theater and painting. Gogeti’s approach to her documentary videos involves filming movements without moving the camera, allowing events to unfold naturally. She views her paintings from the perspective of a cinematic scene, drawing, building, and painting with the cinematic frame in mind. Her artworks evoke archival images from the early 20th century, portraying the body from a medical perspective, often appearing grotesque in its nakedness. The recurring motif of the womb in Shohat’s paintings reflects dreams and explorations of the body.
