What gets lost in a translation? What can we learn from unsaid things?
And how is that silenced shaped? What do forgotten words, books, libraries and archives still tell us? Can we liberate ourselves from assumptions and pose questions instead?
In the HüzünProject she initiated with Nihat Karataslı she participated in the IKSV Research Programme in Istanbul. She worked for After the Archive? an initiative that gains attention to silenced archives and questions the role of archives in the creation of public memory in Turkey.
She likes to curate exhibitions in unexpected spaces, like an archival box that once belonged to Ulises Carrión: No Todo ~ Niet Alles or the public ferry that crosses the waters of Amsterdam for the Amsterdam Ferry Festival. At the end of 2021 she became the artistic director of HMK: an exhibition space an artist-in-residence programme located in a 17th century chapel.
She teached at the MA programme F for Fact at the Sandberg Institute and the Language and Image Department at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. She is also a teacher at the Fine Arts Bachelor programme at Minerva Art Academy in Groningen. Although her practice is about things that cannot be said with words, she sometimes writes for art magazines like Mister Motley.
The exhibition Sit, Stand, Walk! takes place in the headquarters of Tuna Ofis, a company that designs and produces office furniture. Furniture and objects like these condition the way we work, sit, stand, walk, the way we separate the space and thus, the way we move and use the space on a daily basis in a working environment.
This exhibition discusses the hidden power relationships behind these objects, their forms and colors, but also the agenda behind the usage of certain words and sentences in the creation of a workspace. It questions the assumptions that are at play when designing and using a workspace regarding hierarchy, prejudgments and gender roles. The exhibition is about the appearance of innocence and modernity, where actually complex power relationships are at work.
Installations, video works, interventions, workshops and performances by the artists: Fatma Çiftçi, Burak Delier, Nejbir Erkol, Okay Özkan and Belçim Yavuz.
Fatma Çiftçi
Şah and Satranç from Strategy Series
Burak Delier
Gymnastics of Economy and Faith:
Six Compulsory Six Artistic Routines
Nejbir Erkol
Sınır (limit)
Okay Özkan
Daydreaming
Belçim Yavuz
Sit, Stand, Walk! A Workshop on Movement in the Office
Press
Photographs by Volkan Enyüce