Sophia Tabatadze

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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: Humancon Undercon
Year: 2007
Size: Variable dimensions
Material: Print on fabric, embroidery
Place: Georgian pavilion, Venice Biennale, Italy
Orgaizer: Ministry of Culture of Georgia
 
 
 
 
 
       
 

In the work ‘Humancon Undercon’ 2007, I portrayed the current situation in Georgia, the country of my origin, where things change so rapidly that the only way for people to catch up with their changing surroundings is to quickly forget the recent past. I’m concerned with our inability to perceive things in their totality - a totality that includes space and time. I believe this inability lies behind Georgia’s present condition of constant amnesia, in which we choose to overlook certain aspects of our collective past. This mindset creates a layered architecture, leaving very interesting traces of human touch on the buildings.

‘Humancon Undercon’ (decoded title: human condition under construction) consisted of series of black and white photographs printed on fabric, embroidery and miniature sculpted landscapes. These printed images showed fragments of architecture and human traces in an urban environment that has become thoroughly inhuman - large and rough manmade landscapes, half destroyed or not yet fully built buildings. I worked on the details of these images and hand-embroidered parts of them. I chose to embroider the details that showed the human touch within these no-man’s-land landscapes. The embroidered elements were detailed and nostalgic wooden railings on the non-finished parasite loggia on top of the so-called ‘Khrushchev building’, a wooden coffin made from the same wood as the wooden railing, and a finished brick wall in the middle of a concrete carcass. I chose these details in order to emphasise the imbalance or rather the hybrid situation in this reality, and to depict the character of a person living there.