Subu-Diet

2005

Medium: Posters

Dimensions: 66 x 47cm

Location: Streets of Tbilisi, Georgia

This project dealt with dieting and drug addiction – the two activities that were very popular among young people in Georgia at that time. People got involved with them out of desperation, not knowing what else to do. Dieting and drugs offer kind of a hopeless escape: people feel a sort of security by wishing to be someone who they will never be.

 

Subutex is a substitutive medication made to help people cut down on drug use, and to prevent them from cold turkey. It is imported to Georgia from France. Instead of using it for its proper purpose, this pill was usually shared and shot up by a group of eight men. The poster I made showed an enlarged Subutex pill with eight common, urban Georgian names printed on it.

 

Next to this poster, there was another one displaying two kinds of diets for working women and housewives.

 

I placed these posters all over the city, on garbage containers and in places where young people gather. Later, I photographed these places and made postcards: “Greetings from Georgia.”