MYTHOLOGIES
Mardin is centrally located within a geography of antique civilizations, stretching from Egypt to India. Despite the cultural destruction it has undergone due to the political and economical violence of recent years, it still retains noteworthy traces of the symbolic world, the universe of icons and myths, the art and literature it has created, amassed and, in turn, benefitted for centuries. These traces still survive in the daily lives of Mardin’s inhabitants, in their living environment as much as in the ethnographical and architectural heritage of the city.
The talismans, amulets, icons, jewels, garments, books, pictures, photographs, pots and pans, glasses and dishes, rugs and carpets accumulated in houses, shops, workshops form what can be called ‘cabinets of curiosities’: private ‘museums’ where objects form mysterious relations with one another and write unspoken myths. In these ‘museums’, antiquities and ordinary objects, as well as various times that are inscribed in them, constantly bestow new significations upon each other. You may come across such dream worlds on the workbench of a knife-sharpener, or the counter of a coppersmith’s; at a pigeon-trainer’s stall; in a church or a bar as well as in the nooks and crannies of houses. The objective of the 3rd Mardin Biennial is to return the poetry and magic to these cabinets of curiosities that have long ago abandoned them. It calls on artists to explore their memory, to write their mythology.
The 3rd Mardin Biennial is curated by a collective, constituted mostly of locals. Likewise, many of the artists are also locals, among them also artisans and craftsman. Hence, this version of the Mardin Biennial suggests an alternative approach by questioning the prevailing biennial procedure where a single curator, who is unfamiliar with the context and setting, single-handedly decides who to exhibit, what to exhibit, and how to exhibit it. This Biennial vehemently opposes the reduction of the local cultural milieu to an exhibition décor and the identification of the locals with an exhibition forced on them, in other words, to the branding of Mardin by an autocratic curator who imposes a certain view upon the city, its memory and its history. Instead, the proposal is to conceive the Biennial as a Mardin carnival, therefore evoking such concepts as game, chance, spontaneity, serendipity, intimacy and collectivity as means for political resistance.
Such a biennial will undoubtedly be more captivating for the locals who had previously been alienated from art events in their own city as well as for the visiting outsiders who will be exposed to exhibits that truly engage with their context. More importantly, it will give the artists that will participate in the Mardin Biennial a chance to experience this city and bond with its unique imaginative and poetic world.
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Monday, 6 October 2014
Mardin Bienalı 2014
Labels:
arts,
displacement,
Installation,
Mardin Binalı,
Turkey
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
I KNOW A PLACE WHERE WE CAN GO
In October 2013, I was invited to take on a group show curated by Firat ARAPOĞLU at the Bergsen Gallerı, an exhibition space recently opened in Istanbul; One of the ideas he wanted to explore what the sense of belonging and home that many of the artists chosen were examining in their works in one way another.
Sense of belonging is generally defined as the experience of personal involvement in a system or environment so that persons feel themselves to be an integral part of that system or environment. The exhibition propose that sense of belonging occurs in relation to various external referents. These referents include not only other persons and groups but also objects or environments.
The writer Wallace Stegner states in his book "The Angle of Repose" that "Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend". And this is one of the ideas behind the work Fléches Sans Corps; in the present world, an increasingly number of people are experiencing the tragic effects of displacement after having being forced to leave their homes due to the devastating reality of war and poverty.
In many parts of the world, a colossal amount of people have lost their possessions, their farms, houses, jobs... many of them must have been exposed to an extreme level of horrors, perhaps even having their beloved perished, kidnaped, raped... yet, most of the persons have not been able to come to terms with the tremendous effect all this has had upon them.
Fléches Sans Corps is a video installation produced in response to this reality. Using a ship container as a metaphor to address the phenomenon of how many of these people have become double victims of an increasing market of trafficking in which local mafias charged them a huge amount of money to smuggle them into Europe.
In this journey, many of them will die in the desperate attempt for a safe life away from the horrors they have left behind.
Labels:
bergsen gallerı,
firar arapoglu,
sense of belonging,
syria,
uprooted
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Premiere Mucho Mas Mayo Festival, Cartagena (Spain)
Friday, 6 June 2008
Day 2: 9:00 Jaime and Karel arrived from Alicante to start setting up the structure that will support the projector and the reflecting screen; they also will set up the rear projection screen around 4 meters away from the projector. Meanwhile, big sand sacs were delivered to the sea containers and everyone started spreading the sand on the container floor.
4:00 Juan started to carefully set up the shoes whereas Jaime was installing the light at the small sea container; the light was halfway powered so that it looked as it was gradually fading away... It was important to create an atmosphere of graveness to encourage the audience to perceive the work as almost meditative towards the subject.
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Thursday, 22 May 2008
Setting up
Day 1
8:00 am : We have arranged to meet at the front side of the Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology with the engineer from the Harbour Authority who will help with the sea containers - When I arrived at the site, Rosa was already there chatting with the guy who operates the crane - eventually the trucks appeared from behind the building...
It was very bright already and we started preparing everything for the setting up - Angel will directed the crane's staff to gently locate the first sea container - He asked me where the longest container would go and I said that the door should face West. The idea was to set two sea containers facing each other; one was of 12 meters long and the other 6 meters.
8:00 am : We have arranged to meet at the front side of the Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology with the engineer from the Harbour Authority who will help with the sea containers - When I arrived at the site, Rosa was already there chatting with the guy who operates the crane - eventually the trucks appeared from behind the building...
It was very bright already and we started preparing everything for the setting up - Angel will directed the crane's staff to gently locate the first sea container - He asked me where the longest container would go and I said that the door should face West. The idea was to set two sea containers facing each other; one was of 12 meters long and the other 6 meters.
11:30 am : The technicians from the council came to start installing power inside the sea containers. We worked out the best way to install power without leaving the wires too visible. Eventually we decided to buried them under the sand.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
Mucho + Mayo' 08 [ Young Talents Festival ]

In November 2007 I was approached by the coordinator of the festival, Patricio Hernandez, who wanted to invite me to be part of the festival in 2008. As the Festival is focused on young audiences and coordinated by young people, I told him that I would like to propose a project which would look at those "other" youth, who remain invisible to us; young men who left they country in search for a better life.
* * *
Here is the initial proposal:Every day thousands of people gather on the north african beaches awaiting an opportunity to board a boat that can take them to Spain. "fléchés sans corps" is a multimedia installation that explores a subject so called “the illegal immigration”. it suggests a reflection over a tragic reality of all these people, mostly young ones who perish in their attempts to cross the sea and escape poverty, war and injustice. "fléchés sans corps" is inspired by a poem from the Persian writer, Jalal al-Din Rumi."The decision to leave tears me apart
it burns when i remember all my loved ones
although i have left, my heart is still back there,
shrunk
it’s hard to accept the emptiness caused by its absence
I want to find that heart shrunk by separation,
to speak of its pain and its longing everyone
who has left their homeland yearns for the moment of reunion".
In 1989, when I was living in Valencia, I met a young black guy who asked me in English for an address; I didn't know the place but we started talking about the city and so. Frank told me that he had left his country, Nigeria and come to Spain as was they called "illegal" immigrant. We became friends and Frank would explained later how he was forced to leave his family farm after his family was persecuted by police. And how this happened? Because his father had complained against Shell an oil and gas company which had destroyed his land. That year,
Frank's dad was murdered and he, his mother and brother had to leave for Senegal, where would remain until Frank decided to travel to Spain.
Like Frank, many other young men have been forced to leave their homeland and found themselves in a journey which for many of them will finish drowning in the sea. Since 1989, thousand of them have died or disappeared. We will never be able to recover their bodies...
perhaps their families will never know their husband, brother, son...is not longer alive.
Introduction
'Flêches Sans Corps (Arrows Without Bodies)' is an environmental sound/video installation incorporating the key issues pertaining to the subject of the so-called 'illegal' immigration, combining practices and techniques from artistic areas ranging from performance, video and sound, and installation. This project has brought together the Spanish London-based artist Juan delGado and a group of artists from Spain, Iran, Turkey and Morocco with a genuine personal interest in the subject.
Our aim was to establish new ways of collaboration by providing the opportunity to exchange ideas and art practices, which would serve to enhance the dialogue amongst the participant artists and would improve the quality and originality of their future work. To date, the work we have produced investigates that deepest part of self which contends with the trauma of displacement.
Since 1997, Juan delGado has produced a body of work combining video, photography and installation including the photographic series The Wounded Image(1997-2002) in which he explored the concept of traumatic experiences as an attempt to release a swirling vortex of his own fears and anxieties. Set mostly in domestic scenarios and borrowing language from films and photojournalism he created a narrative, a story drawn upon real experiences of violence, child abuse and racism. This work was selected by the John Kobal Photographic Awards and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.
In 2001, he directed and co-produced a digital video installation entitled don't look under the bed. Based on a real experience this work portrayed issues related to intolerance, and social exclusion. He also developed a video performance entitled Who are you entertaining to? as part of the Culture Lab programme 2002 and in collaboration with Vivid Media Centre, Birmingham. Here, Juan continues his inquiry about cruelty and trauma while also questioning his role - social/political - as an artist.
Our aim was to establish new ways of collaboration by providing the opportunity to exchange ideas and art practices, which would serve to enhance the dialogue amongst the participant artists and would improve the quality and originality of their future work. To date, the work we have produced investigates that deepest part of self which contends with the trauma of displacement.
Since 1997, Juan delGado has produced a body of work combining video, photography and installation including the photographic series The Wounded Image(1997-2002) in which he explored the concept of traumatic experiences as an attempt to release a swirling vortex of his own fears and anxieties. Set mostly in domestic scenarios and borrowing language from films and photojournalism he created a narrative, a story drawn upon real experiences of violence, child abuse and racism. This work was selected by the John Kobal Photographic Awards and exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.
In 2001, he directed and co-produced a digital video installation entitled don't look under the bed. Based on a real experience this work portrayed issues related to intolerance, and social exclusion. He also developed a video performance entitled Who are you entertaining to? as part of the Culture Lab programme 2002 and in collaboration with Vivid Media Centre, Birmingham. Here, Juan continues his inquiry about cruelty and trauma while also questioning his role - social/political - as an artist.
Labels:
body,
displacement,
homosexuality,
photography,
trauma
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