Sophia Tabatadze

links projects cv upcoming contacts
 
   
2002  
- Wallpaper  
- Self-Portrait as Architecture  
   
2003  
- De Doorzonwoning  
- House on Wheels  
   
2004  
- Architectural Drawings  
- Buildings and Strangebuildings  
- What We Thought Was a Wall   Turned Out to Be a Curtain  
- Tunnel  
   
2005  
- Heroes of Stagnation  
- Subu-Diet  
   
2006  
- Caucasian Memory Game  
- Georgian Toasting Traditions  
- Much More  
   
2007  
- Humancon Undercon  
   
2008  
- From Flags to Flowers  
- All my Re-Collections  
   
2009  
- Travelers Journal  
   
2010  
- Calendar and F Words  
- Just Buy and Put a Fence
Round it
 
   
2011  
- Gulo  
   
2012  
- Limitations of Imitation  
- Screens  
   
2012-14  
- Pirimze  
   
Title: What We Thought Was A Wall Turned Out To Be A Curtain
Year: 2004
Size: Room installation
Material: Wood, fabric
Place: Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
 
 


What we thought was a wall turned out to be a curtain. And the converse was also true: the wall disappeared but a stronger wall remained, the one that exists in our minds – a transparent veil you can’t see through, the wall that turns into a curtain, the curtain that is sewn shut on both sides. Among the questions I asked myself in this piece were, how much can one really see of the other side, and how much of this is what one wants to see? Can I face my image of the other side being destroyed, or do I still think I can build my own home anywhere I start working and creating things around me? Will creating things this way help? Or is it just a form of escape - of creating my own miniature world and seeing everything in its terms? This work deals with the human body placed in new surroundings, and the relation of human beings to their lived space. It is concerned with how human beings change their surroundings to suit themselves, with what happens to them during this process, and how the body itself changes and becomes influenced by its surroundings.

To approach this theme, I put it in the context of Eastern and Western Europe, and of what happened when the old borders disappeared and the new ones emerged. To me, the east – west metaphor stands for how we tend to perceive the world only from our own viewpoint, and try to fit everything we see and experience into our pattern of thinking. Meanwhile, each side changes constantly and dramatically over very short periods of time, be it in respect of people, architecture or their respective social and political situations.

This form of this installation showed coexistence of order and chaos, the façade and what is hidden behind it, the orderliness and the mess. The wooden constructions demonstrated both these energies and the tension between them.