In Block/Lot, shown in the exhibition “Diffusion” at Kav 16 Gallery in Tel Aviv, Meir Tati combines a monumental graphite map of the Neve Eliezer neighborhood with a small LCD monitor documenting an action in its streets. The map provides a frame for the filmed performance and connects the gallery to its surroundings.

At night, Tati marks the neighborhood’s sidewalks with yellow powder, tracing a boundary that also appears in the wall drawing. He disperses the powder through a pipe attached to a transparent, three-compartment backpack. The apparatus recalls pest-control equipment used in the region during the 1960s, suggesting histories of exclusion and the treatment of immigrants as unwanted outsiders.

The yellow line evokes warning, separation, and the neighborhood’s social marginalization. Yet the action resists a single political reading: the colorful, improvised device also resembles a prop from science fiction or a comic book. What might appear aggressive becomes theatrical, absurd, and darkly humorous.

Tati’s performative persona turns these social associations into material for parody. His presence neither claims an elite position nor asks for sympathy as an outsider. Instead, humor and theatricality unsettle familiar conventions of protest, leaving the work open to conflicting interpretations.