Hanging on the wall, like a miniature cityscape, are some 30 empty birdcages, each with a speaker as their sole occupant. While some are elaborate and clad in gold or silver, others are rusty and battered by the passage of time. From their dense latticework, a rising choir of chirps, trills, silences and warbles emanates. The song is that of the goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis in Latin or El Meknine in Algerian, where it has become a treasured companion.  Yellow and white with a face dipped in vermilion and wings lacquered in gold, the goldfinch grew to be central to the iconography of love and liberty. But while the finch may embody freedom, its existence has become endangered by its domestication. Once one notices that, in fact, the speakers inhabiting the cages are not transmitting the bird’s song but that of humans imitating them, this becomes all the more evident. This is where Tabti’s installation Homo-Carduelis returns the metaphor to mankind: while we sing of the finch’s flight and beauty, have we – apart from entrapping animals – become entrapped ourselves?