The visitors will have the chance to view 4 different artists’ works at HAYAKA ARTI that “intend to lift the barriers, which are built by the system and its beliefs, enslaving the humankind”.
Artists: Dilara Akay, Argun Okumuşoğlu, Şiir Özbilge, Gündüz Vassaf
Dates: 12.09 - 12.10.2013
http://www.hayakaarti.com/category/events/visual-arts
CATHARSIS - Project Definition
“The sense of purification a tragedy awakens in the audience…”
Once, takunyas (Turkish bathing clogs) were daily objects that were commonly produced and used. Today they have been replaced by plastic slippers, and have no use anymore even in Turkish baths. The few takunya production workshops left here and there, are on the verge of quitting their business.
The idiom “being under the occupation of people wearing takunyas” was a phrase frequently used in the modernization period of the new Turkish Republic during the years from 1940 to 1990. Yet today, the new generation has never of this definition. This is an indication that in the relationship we establish with our past, also our language changes, just like everything else changing during the course of time. As we get rid of the traces of the reflections of policies of polarization, discrimination, exclusion, marginalization on our language, our form of thinking and perceiving changes as well.
The installation “Catharsis” was thought and created to give back life to takunyas-objects actually produced to meet the daily requirements of people-and to contribute to the culture of living together by causing a refraction of meaning on the symbols attributed to this word.
The installation “Catharsis”, is an experimentation devoted to the purification of thought, in search of multiple meanings of the object of installation… It involves references, questions, initiatives directed at the “Biopower” methods of the geography we belong to.
It is intended as an answer/study to address the question of the 13th Istanbul Biennial:
“When good-willed interventions ‘into’ the public domain by artists, architects, urban planners and politicians are so often quickly capitalized, how do we rethink our public relations – relations of subjects, between subjects- in the spaces we need to learn to share, and with the methods of co-production that we need to invent?”
Artist : Şiir Özbilge
Video : Selçuk Yılmazer
Video Art : Sine Özbilge
Sound installation : Emre Baloğlu