Sophia Tabatadze is concerned with political and social events that lead to change – often radical and sudden – in the life circumstances of those people affected. Above all, she documents and reflects on those changes that have been experienced by the inhabitants of her home country Georgia in the recent phase of its chequered history.
Tabatadze’s artistic strategy is the inversion of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’: photos of house facades become interior decoration, images of human organs are combined to create a trendy wallpaper pattern, and a cosily furnished apartment is displayed behind transparent Perspex in a manner that is anything but cosy. Full of fine irony, Tabatadze’s installations, video works and performances recount the discrepancy between form and content, facade and interior – in short: the discrepancy between “semblance” and “being” that is a permanent reality in our world. Although Tabatadze’s works usually examine her home country, they nevertheless lay claim to universal validity. Their point of reference, the artist’s main interest, is the ‘condition humaine’ in our global village.
In “All My re-Collections” at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Sophia Tabatadze displays collections of everyday things that she gathered during different phases of her life. Usually, these would serve as starting points for Tabatadze’s artistic work, but here the inconspicuous objects themselves become the theme of the presentation,
so revealing the process that leads to the genesis of an artwork.