Kunsthaus Göttingen
18.06.-25.09.2022
documenta-fifteen partner project
Artistic Director, spritus rector: Gerhard Steidl
The versatile project printing futures combines contributions by the artists Shahidul Alam (Bangladesh), Alper Aydin (Turkey), Theseus Chan (Singapore), Jim Dine (USA), Christoph Heubner (Germany), Sibel Horada (Turkey), Sofia Karim (England), Maya Mercer (USA), Albert Ostermaier (Germany) and Dayanita Singh (India) at three neighbouring locations within the Göttingen Art Quarter between Düstere Straße and Nikolaistraße adjacent to the Nikolaikirchhof.
Continuous geopolitical changes have been shaping a different type and understanding of “contemporary image making” in Turkey. The search for unfrozen, affective images that arise in artistic research creates a new platform for experimentation and has a link to fundamental changes in Turkish society. This not only became a source of inspiration for artists, but also provided tremendous support to all fields of cultural life to establish a diverse field of articulation.
Our presentation tackles three main questions:
- How have political changes influenced the works of creative individuals in Turkey? What is the role of “performing transition” in the process of perpetual transformation? How are artists reflecting this in their works and which metaphors arise through their processes?
- Are generation specific topics being raised through the attitudes, approaches, and roles that contemporary artists are adopting in their works?
- How are forms of artistic reflection changing today? How is art blurring with poetry, black humour, and cultural activism?
Sibel Horada presents a version of Clearing Space in Still Water, a work that takes place in Istanbul’s Taksim square. In her two-channel video installation, “she tries to activate a potential (artistic) flow in the rainwater that accumulates in the otherwise dry, vestigial basins on two sides of Taksim Republic Monument, by reverting to the art of traditional paper marbling”.
Alper Aydın’s The Song of the Earth is reflecting on the dramatically changes of the last natural area on the coastline from Turkey to Georgia. The artist, who found the real weight of the last remaining natural rocks in this region, created a poetic wall installation.