In “Humancon Undercon” (2007), Tabatadze returns to installation after a year spent working mainly in video and performance. The work shows the influence of the latter in that it introduces for the first time an element of fictional narrative. The artist imagines the construction of an apartment block in her native Tbilisi, whose story embodies the corrupt and chaotic nature of Georgia`s slow economic recovery: its steel skeleton, divided into units and corruptly sold off while still under construction, is built up piecemeal by its new owners.

This metaphor for the privatisation of the country`s centralised economy is personalised by the introduction of fictional characters. Tabatadze has imagined how the new inhabitants will procure their own building materials and arrange their own apartments: one of them, in an act of absurd foresight, has even installed his own coffin.

This gesture suggests a link between death and the trappings of social respectability. But it also acknowledges that preparing to die in a particular place implies preparing to live there, to make it one`s home.

(Nathaniel McBride)