Tikkun (“amendment”)

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In this work, Tati documents actions in an urban setting. Some took place at sites of terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv; others revisited places in Bat Yam associated with what he calls “personal traumas” from his childhood. Wearing a vest that sprays paint, he stains the walls at these sites, leaving a residue of the action.

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The video installation brings national and individual histories into contact through their respective traumas. This encounter between the political and the personal is characteristic of Tati’s practice. Images from computer games, B-movies, and science fiction are combined with material from the internet and the news. Humour and the visual language of Pop art release the political subject from a potentially didactic treatment, opening a more poetic, layered perspective.

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​Dressed entirely in yellow, with a paint vest on his back, the character appears to set out to repair the world. Yet unlike a comic-book hero, Tati’s superhero is powerless: the action is futile, an ironic metaphor for art’s inability to amend reality.