Works

The Distance

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The Distance (Kuşadası-Samos), 2017

fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 gr/m²
102.2×102.2 cm

A square, blue-colored piece of paper made of 922 vertical and 922 horizontal lines, each 92.2 cm long. The total length of the lines demonstrates the closest distance between Kuşadası (Turkey) and Samos Island (Greece). In the work, the paper has a grid spacing of 1 mm intervals, like those commonly used in graph papers. Therefore, although the lines that create the work demonstrates a specific distance, it also appears as an empty piece of paper awaiting to be filled before the viewers. The title “the distance” also emphasizes the distance of the artists’ reality to the reality of the “situation” itself, that is, the freedom of travel through the migration routes without having any troubles. That is to say, the distance, even the same distance, is not the same distance when it comes to going through it.

photos 1,2: Işık Kaya

Fireworks

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Fireworks, 2015-ongoing

digital video, loop

The video highlights the ironical transformation of the use of fireworks, which are normally associated with celebrations and an aesthetic experience. The fireworks in the video are no longer exploding in vertical direction but in horizontal direction and what is there to see is not the beauty of these explosions but protection shields that emerge instantaneously where these explosions take place.

Installation view; Dirimart, Istanbul
photos: Işık Kaya

Video installation at Dirimart, video: Işık Kaya

Right

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Right, 2015

fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 g/m² 41.2×60 cm

All instances of the word “right” graphically overlap, as it is used in the Constitution (36 times in total). As a result, the work pushes the rest of the Constitution to the background and concentrates on the foundational function of a constitution, which is to secure the basic rights and freedom of all individuals.

photos: Işık Kaya

The Portrait

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The Portrait, 2015

fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 g/m²
120×144 cm

The Portrait addresses the wealth inequality, highlighted by the slogan “We are the 99 percent,” by focusing on the other side of the equation.
The work brings together, in a single photographic print, the faces of the 100 wealthiest individuals listed in Forbes magazine’s World’s Billionaires list for 2015. The composite image—created by printing these 100 photographs on top of one another using the draft mode of an inkjet printer—forms an anonymous figure. The ghostly traces of all these faces merge into one, resembling an identikit in a biometric photo format.
Only when viewed from a certain distance does the photograph reveal a human figure, evoking the distance between those who constitute the portrait and the rest of society—the 99 percent.

Installation view; Dirimart, Istanbul
photo 1: Işık Kaya

June 2013

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June 2013, 2015

fine art print on Hahnemühle canvas 340 g/m²
140×300 cm

The facade of the Atatürk Cultural Center building in Taksim Square of Istanbul was covered with posters during the Gezi Park protests in 2013. The variety of the posters was a reflection of the collective existence of differences. In this work, sound waves of a recording taken during the Gezi Park protests and the image of the facade covered with posters are superimposed on one another. The dimensions of the work are proportional to the facade of the AKM building.

photo: Işık Kaya

Constitutive Lines

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Constitutive Lines, 2015

fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 g/m²
134×200 cm

The work reduces national flags into lines like in the first steps of their designs. It includes all the flags that have linear separations in their designs.

Installation view; Dirimart, Istanbul
photos 1,3: Işık Kaya

Self Defence

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Self Defence, 2015

stainless steel; ø 80 cm; length of sound waves 324 m

Self-Defence (2015) […] visualizes the collective sound of protestors during the Gezi Park resistance. In this piece, the artists magnify a thirteen second sound file recorded during the protests and turn it into a 330 metre razor wire. The sound waves gain physical forms as steel plates and are fixed on a spring wire as if they are protrusions on a razor wire. The fact that the audio recording is a file found on the internet highlights the anonymity of the spread of Gezi protests. On the other hand, the razor wire was produced in one piece, presenting all sound waves, each unique in shape, as part of a whole, reminding of the Gezi experience as a collective existence within a plurality of differences. […] The installation of the work […] aims to reflect a sense of solidarity, the idea of a crowd that incorporates differences while also creating a solid ground for itself.

Rana Öztürk, minute by minute (Istanbul: Dirimart Publications, 2015)

Installation view; Dirimart, Istanbul
photos: Işık Kaya

On the Fringe

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On the Fringe, 2015

silk weaving on silk fabric 120×160 cm; fine art print on semi-gloss photo paper, vitrine: 90x225x85 cm

The work emphasizes the memory of a Kurdish village near Nusaybin, which was subjected to forced displacement in 90’s. This project consists of collected scan samples of images of the houses that have been left empty for a long time and the magnified silk weaving of the gaps of a piece of curtain remaining from the window frame of one of those houses.

Installation view; former German Military Headquarters, Mardin, TR
photos: Günyol&Kunt

Sky Blue (official)

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Sky Blue (official), 2015

21*29,7 cm, fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag 308gsm

Sky blue (official) comprises shades of blue that represent the sky in national flags.

Untitled

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Untitled, 2014

7 metal plates, tin, zinc, brass, copper, aluminum, steel, nickel, each 0.1x40x40 cm; wooden pedestal 40x40x105 cm 

The work Untitled (2014), […] consists of a pedestal onto which have been stacked plates of congruent format made of tin, copper, zinc, nickel, brass, aluminum, and steel —the materials, in other words, used to produce euro coins. Formally speaking, an aesthetically attractive rigor runs through the artists’ works as a unifying theme. In the case of Untitled, this rigor is abundantly evident in the plain yet trenchant design of its pedestal onto which, as in earlier works, the metal plates are flush mounted to present a compact cube.

Sandra Dichtl, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2014).

Installation view; Dortmunder Kunstverein
photos: Roland Baege