Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student Fellow
About
Sopio Gagoshidze is a Forsyth Visiting Graduate Student Fellow in the History of Art at the University of Michigan and a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the art and material culture of medieval Georgia, with particular interest in cross-cultural interactions and artistic exchanges between Georgia and Byzantium.
Her dissertation, The Khakhuli Triptych and the Art of Repurposing, reconsiders the Khakhuli Triptych within the framework of global medieval art history and seeks to identify and address the reuse of Byzantine visual elements on the triptych. She argues that the triptych, along with its numerous enamels, functioned through acts of repurposing to associate and bolster the reign and political ambitions of its commissioner, King Davit, with the visual language and trappings of the Byzantine Empire. More broadly, her work investigates repurposing as both an artistic and ideological practice in medieval visual culture.
In 2022, Sopio curated Locating Georgia: Selections from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum - the first major exhibition in the United States dedicated to Georgian art.
