Solo exhibition held at Mixer Project Room, 2020, Istanbul
I wished to talk about distance. I intended to form new connections between my relationships, what I saw and what I missed. By depicting physical and mental distances I intended to seek again ways to redefine them. And by getting closer to the subjects I intended to depict, I would actually create Self-portraits. I started by documenting the Span of a Hand, then I tried to get closer to the ones I know the most by depicting their unfrequently exhibited limbs under the heading of Family Portraits. Just then, we began to witness distance emerging in our lives with new definitions. I fell right in the middle of the matter. As I got closer to the subject, internally and externally I gained distances within distances. I couldn’t keep up. I had to start over again:
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First, I educated myself by Looking at the Same Thing every day.I have acquired new habits and routines with those who need me and with those who I need the most.
All I could do in order to reconnect with things was to go back to the images that have been good for me in the past:
During this period, an image I came across in 2018 in Hatay Archeology Museum tags along once again. It’s a female figure carved in ivory, dating from the Late Bronze Age, from Ancient Alalakh. I resemble her to myself. Worried but prepared for anything. It feels good to say I Love You, I know it will be good for her to hear it too.
Amidst such inactiveness when I raise my head we come eye-to-eye with my partner. We Share the Same Studio, You are here he says. The gazes we share prove each other’s existence.
As I make the most of my luxury of not having to go out, I think of those who are obliged to. I have my Moment of Silence, through my forgotten shoes, for those who are forced to take their bodies outside with their shoes, their jackets and their bags.
I am no longer interested in what my friends do that day, either. My only concern is, do they have a headache? A sore throat, or maybe a fever? How are they really? How do they react, how do they feel? Actually, I know what you are up to Erhan. Because we are all at that point. Telephone in our hands, empty walls in front of us, we sleep, then get up.
I am humming the song How to Disappear Completely from Radiohead’s Kid A album released in 2000: I’m Not Here, This isn’t Happening, I am not here, I am not here…
I think of those who could not experience this period because they are no longer alive. I question how they would have reacted had they been alive. I crave for their beings. I want to be a mediator so that they can continue witnessing. I Want Them to Live like dry plants.
By the way, I built myself A Garden in my flat. My distance to the sky and to the language of plants showed me the way. The smoke I inhaled became my atmosphere, and every consumed cigarette transformed into the spikes of the plants.
As I said, My Reason to Visit was to talk about distances, to come as close as possible. Time is required to understand and to absorb new definitions. When I silence my anxieties the place in which I find myself excites me, and it’s then I wait with curiosity for what nature intends to remind and teach us.
Ahu Akgün (March – June 2020)
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