Sophio Medoidze, Sainsbury Scholar, speaks about the work she has produced during her residency at the BSR ahead of the Spring Open Studios 2025.
Medea,
when she was a little girl,
used to speak
to the dragon,
as though they were old friends,
They only spoke in Georgian.
Now, she’s caught
in another story
and speaks Greek,
which the dragon thinks rather odd.
Medea sees nothing,
she fears nothing,
her heart is like a sharpened knife,
her will is unbreakable.
‘I SHALL STEAL THE GOLDEN RAM.’
Relinquish power
to gain power.
Hers is the method
not yet tested,
but so wild at heart
she is
she won’t listen
to anyone,
Even Circe.
Circe is called Kirke, Chirke, Sirse, Sirke in different tongues but she couldn’t care less.
‘Be aware of other people’s dreams, they can devour you,’
she likes to say.
The three-legged
mountain monster
Tebjorika,
has to climb the steep mountain,
to get to the top,
where she is not feared.
Medea
has to go to
another country
to have a new name,
to find someone
to forge her ID.
Medea,
not Medea.
Medea,
not Medea.
‘Will I be feared there too?’
She misses her fatherland
with its lush green heels
winged horses,
and the fountains of milk and honey.
Plants that are both
poison and cure.
‘It’s all about diluting them right—
Medicine is diluted poison’,
Circe told her once,
when they lived together in Colchis.
Circe lives alone now,
exiled to a deserted island,
Her only pastime: turning men into pigs.
Circe
and
Dali,
Medea’s only supporters.
‘Where are you both when I need you most ?!
Instead, I listen to these Corinthian women,
who don’t speak my language,
and can’t tell a goat from a sheep!’
But now Medea walks with Tebjorika,
the three-legged mountain monster,
who doesn’t know how to read or write,
and eats figs all day long.
But she is genuine and kind,
in a way that only those who have done monstrous things can be.
Tebjorika has a single wrinkle on her forehead,
which gives away her sadness.
‘If only the village folk would leave me alone,
with their superstitions.’
Excerpt from Medea and Tebjorika, by Sophio Medoidze. 2025.
Rome is cavernous.
It’s difficult to film.
The librarian.
His ring looked at me
with the huge green stone.
What did he say?
Pasolini’s script –
I wanted to see it.
I saw a newspaper photograph,
Pasolini’s body—something resembling a face.
Violence. The violence of Medea.
A story told differently each time,
with a different ending.
By whom?
Other poets, all of them men,
and this Roman who was an exile.
I got sick in Rome,
of Rome.
A doctor came—an Italian doctor.
He listened to my lungs.
‘Can you speak with your lungs?’
Can you speak with your lungs?
Rome is cavernous.
It’s difficult to film.
Violence on TV, and of TV,
an Italian newspaper, a large image, a spread
He is lying on the ground, dead.
I shall go to Ostia tomorrow,
to film in the park.
Not the park opposite,
where green is overwhelmed by stone.
The park in Ostia—last time, there were only mosquitos.
Ostia seaside people—an antidote to Rome.
Pasolini’s monument,
which is pointless.
PPP—three poems
in a semicircle,
on the same ground.
Will there be mosquitoes this time?
The cave is full of shadows.
Medea is a shadow.
To film is to work with shadows.
What is the fear?
How to work with that fear?
Pasolini’s death is like a mythic narrative,
every telling of the myth
is a part of that myth.
The poem of force.
The poem is a force.
To film is to work with shadows.
Medea is a shadow.
Caves have shadows.
That is the fear?
How did the oracle speak?
In colours—
Blue means love,
Red means death.
No need for a flat picture.
No need to make her into a hero.
She does not ask to be redeemed.
‘Oh, my beloved country—how much I miss you!
What a long journey it has been.
Have I changed?
Have you forgotten me?’
I shall go to Ostia tomorrow.
Will there be mosquitoes this time?
Excerpt from Circe’s Dream, a film by Sophio Medoidze. 2025.
All images and text © Sophio Medoidze.
