Green Art Gallery

PRESS

Collective Exhaustion And Endless Ropes. Interview With Afra Al Dhaheri
The Sandy Times, Alexandra Mansilla

Afra Al Dhaheri hides these amazing, lush curly locks. And hair transformations have become a ritual in her work. Just look at her pieces — long ropes hanging from the ceiling to the floor, or from a tree to the ground — ring any bells?
But Afra’s art isn’t just about ropes. She is always experimenting with different materials — glass, cement, wood, marble, you name it. During the pandemic, she even created her first marble piece — a massive sculpture that looks like a stack of pillows.

Also, she created a piece called "Collective Exhaustion," and when you see it, it feels like there is no better way to convey collective fatigue — looking at her work, you can physically feel the weight of exhaustion.

Afra Al Dhaheri is one of the artists participating in the third edition of Numoo, the artist development initiative by The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), supported by the U.S. Mission to the UAE. And we decided to dive into her world — so, read this interview where you will discover the deeper meanings behind her works and the stories of their creation.

Read:

Collective Exhaustion And Endless Ropes. Afra Al Dhaheri The story of an artist who created a piece that perfectly reflects collective fatigue

ON VIEW

ANA MAZZEI

Vai, vai, Saudade
Donnaregina Contemporary Art Museum - Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
4 July- 30 September 2024

Ana Mazzei was born in 1980 in Sao Paulo (Brazil), where she lives and works.
Men and their narratives in their inseparable relationships, the history of performance, theater and reality in contemporary life are particularly interesting to Ana Mazzei. It is in this perspective that his work develops and enriches. The artist uses imagination, epic or mythological narratives to produce fleeting realities that momentarily disrupt our relationship with the objects around us, staging a real theater of absurdity. With Espetáculo (2016), the artist explores a new territory of actions, in which objects appear to be the main characters of a theater without action, or the audience of an act that takes place in the body of the visitor. Its shapes refer to astrological studies or devices of a different science than we know.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/ana-mazzei7

ON VIEW

DORSA ASADI

In your dreams
Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai, UAE
3 August - 12 October 2024

What can we dream into reality? The flame of imagined possibilities within us foretells tangible manifestations. Letting the fire consume us like a torch, the clarifying illumination dismantles silencing forces.

Born from a premonition, In your dreams/في أحلامك/مگه خوابشو ببینی features multidisciplinary artworks that often combine traditional elements of Iranian culture with imagination and provocation offering emancipatory perspectives on identity and gender.

This is not idle daydreaming but a gripping attention to what feels so lucid that we cannot turn away. Having recognised this power to envision and the fullness of its satisfaction, we can accept no less.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/dorsa-asadi

CLOSING SOON

REVERBERATIONS: TEXTILE AS ECHO
M’barek Bouhchichi, Sayan Chanda, Himali Singh Soin and Swapnaa Tamhane
7 May - 27 July 2024

While Tamhane and Soin present textiles as scores—for the repeating rhythms of the handmade and for Other future imaginaries, respectively—Bouhchichi and Chanda translate architecture and landscape onto and into fabric, highlighting textile’s capacity to hold and carry personal and collective memory, history, and identity. Through their research into and use of traditional techniques and materials and their collaborations with master artisans, these artists ensure that the rich history of textile art continues to reverberate into and through the contemporary. The “verb” embedded in “reverberation” echoes the vitality demonstrated by the diversity of these artistic approaches and subjects. It reminds us that textile is frequently the result of collective and collaborative labor, a mode of expression in which thought does not precede action or dialogue but emerges from and through it. It also reminds us that textile is not solely a product but also always a process, one that continues to resonate through time and across landscapes both familiar and unexpected.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions/reverberations-textile-as-echo

ON VIEW

HALE TENGER
My Dreams Were Dashed Against Your Walls
DEO Projects, Medieval Village of Vessa, Chios, Greece
6 July - 8 September 2024

Hale Tenger presents a new outdoor installation which delves into themes of abandonment and isolation resonating on personal, social, and political levels. She overlays tamata –votive offerings akin to those found in the Greek Orthodox churches– on the inner walls of a house in ruins: upon entering, the space is immediately filled with the sound of exuberant children playing at school recess. Traditional tamata are the first to catch the eye, evoking thoughts of daily rituals and wishes for happiness. However, a subtle strangeness pervades the space, with the physical absence of children and some unusual tamata standing out from the rest.

Amongst these newly handcrafted tamata, four of them –a bird, a fish, a tree, planet Earth– are symbolic representations of life untouched by human intervention, emphasising the interconnectedness of all life. The fifth tama –a strawberry– serves as a poignant reminder of mourning for the lost innocent lives and of resilience. In this artistic narrative, Tenger encourages contemplation of the ripple effects of our choices and the complex interplay between our connection to reality and our conscious and unconscious psychological coping strategies. Reflecting on hierarchical structures that perpetuate fear and division, and society’s tendency to avoid challenges and to conform to limiting norms, Tenger urges us to embrace vulnerability and advocates for a culture rooted in empathy that fosters unity in diversity.

New commissioned work by DEO Projects

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/hale-tenger7

UPCOMING

DORSA ASADI

In your dreams
Bayt Al Mamzar, Dubai, UAE
3 August - 12 October 2024

What can we dream into reality? The flame of imagined possibilities within us foretells tangible manifestations. Letting the fire consume us like a torch, the clarifying illumination dismantles silencing forces.

Born from a premonition, In your dreams/في أحلامك/مگه خوابشو ببینی features multidisciplinary artworks that often combine traditional elements of Iranian culture with imagination and provocation offering emancipatory perspectives on identity and gender.

This is not idle daydreaming but a gripping attention to what feels so lucid that we cannot turn away. Having recognised this power to envision and the fullness of its satisfaction, we can accept no less.

More information: https://www.baytalmamzar.org/portfolio

ON VIEW

HERA BÜYÜKTASÇIYAN: DEFENDING ANCIENT WATERS

Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCC OD), Tours, France
29 March 2024 – 5 January 2025

The title of this work was inspired by the title of the British poet Kathleen Raine’s collection of texts titled Defending Ancient Springs (1967).

In the nave of CCC OD, a wave submerges in the space, evoking France’s largest river which flows close to the art centre. The powerful energy of the river merged with the memory of the stable waters of the Vassivière lake and the springs of Plateau de Millevaches.

Fragments of wood and bark collected by the artist during her daily walks along the banks of Vassivière Island adorn the geotextile with abstract geometric patterns. Resembling archaeological remnants or a musical score, the upper part of these fragments appear as the mirrorings of the currents of the Loire river. While on the ground, the skilfully composed sedimented and mosaic-like particles of mulch refer to the foundations of the hamlets swallowed up by the construction of the hydroelectric dam, which still lie beneath the surface of Vassivière lake. Energy and noise have been replaced by placidity and silence.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/hera-buyuktasciyan-defending-ancient-waters

ON VIEW

ANA MAZZEI

Vai, vai, Saudade
Donnaregina Contemporary Art Museum - Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
4 July- 30 September 2024

Vai, vai, Saudade, a collective exhibition that offers a poetic pathway, exploring a series of stories related to the art produced in Brazil since WWII. These are “travel notes” that merge together to form a free but interconnected exhibition itinerary of formal and conceptual, spiritual and earthly, political and geographical themes that together form the basis of a narrative that follows a novel-like logic. Touching on pressing issues of continental, modern and contemporary Brazil, the exhibition takes its title from a samba composed by Heitor dos Prazeres (Rio de Janeiro, 1898–1966), a Carioca artist who was among the first to be subjected to censorship by the military dictatorship in 1964.

From the end of slavery—not repealed until 1888—to the subsequent mass immigration waves, mainly from Italy, Lebanon, Japan, and Germany, through to the more recent Bolsonarismo, Brazil has developed amid positivism and democracy, dictatorship and censorship, frustration and hope, without ever abandoning the resilient spirit typical of countries that have been through a similar colonial history. A country that has proved itself able to build an identity based on the valorization of multiculturalism and the fusion of multiple languages, defying the Eurocentric and monolithic approach to art history: since the beginning of the last century, Brazil has stood among the leading protagonists of the avant-garde on the world stage, and there is no avant-garde without the observation of ancestral cultures or those over-simplistically considered “popular.”

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/ana-mazzei7

NEWS

AFRA AL DHAHERI

The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi Announces Third Cohort for Numoo

The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has announced the third edition of the artists development initiative, Numoo, an intensive program to foster and accelerate the growth of performing artists in the UAE and contribute to the development of the nation’s arts ecosystem.

Numoo has been supported by grants from the U.S. Mission to the UAE since its inception in 2021. The current edition is running from May through September 2024. The program enables artists to grow professionally in their field, providing enhanced tools to showcase their work to the UAE public and beyond, and build a sustainable artistic community that promotes ongoing development and collaboration.

The participating UAE-based artists come from diverse backgrounds and levels of artistic experience. From poets to musicians, dancers, choreographers, writers, and theater makers, this international group learn from professionals in the field and are trained in different skills to develop a comprehensive understanding of the arts field in the UAE and beyond.

More information: https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news/latest-news/community-life/2024/july/nyuad-arts-center-announces-numoo-cohort.html

ON VIEW

MICHAEL RAKOWITZ

Delinking and Relinking
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
on view until 1 June 2026

Featuring 120 pieces of art and spanning all five floors of the museum’s collection wing, "Delinking and Relinking" invites you to experience art differently. Sometimes in the literal sense, by touching, smelling or listening to it; other times metaphorically, by giving expression to different, lesser-known voices. Mostly inspiring and occasionally confrontational, Delinking and Relinking spans more than a century of art history, with 'Hommage à Apollinaire' by Marc Chagall from 1913 as earliest work and 'This Means Tableau' from 2019 by Laure Prouvost as most recent work.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/michael-rakowitz4

ON VIEW

REVERBERATIONS: TEXTILE AS ECHO
Curated by Murtaza Vali

M’barek Bouhchichi, Sayan Chanda, Himali Singh Soin and Swapnaa Tamhane
7 May - 27 July 2024

While Tamhane and Soin present textiles as scores—for the repeating rhythms of the handmade and for Other future imaginaries, respectively—Bouhchichi and Chanda translate architecture and landscape onto and into fabric, highlighting textile’s capacity to hold and carry personal and collective memory, history, and identity. Through their research into and use of traditional techniques and materials and their collaborations with master artisans, these artists ensure that the rich history of textile art continues to reverberate into and through the contemporary. The “verb” embedded in “reverberation” echoes the vitality demonstrated by the diversity of these artistic approaches and subjects. It reminds us that textile is frequently the result of collective and collaborative labor, a mode of expression in which thought does not precede action or dialogue but emerges from and through it. It also reminds us that textile is not solely a product but also always a process, one that continues to resonate through time and across landscapes both familiar and unexpected.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions/reverberations-textile-as-echo

PRESS

ANA MAZZEI
The Artist's Words: Ana Mazzei, Haize
April 2024

Ana Mazzei is a multidisciplinary artist from São Paulo who skillfully explores the diverse realms of painting, sculpture, videos, and installations. Throughout her career, Ana has focused on experimental practices, integrating various materials such as cement, wood, felt, and cloth into her immersive environments.

Ana’s works are rooted in staging and arranging elements in front of the viewer. Each piece serves as a fragment of narrative, intertwining myths, lives, and imaginative fictions across different mediums. In her practice, diverse scenarios are brought to life through sculptures, drawings, photographs, performances, and installations that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.

Read: https://www.gagallery.com/press/haize

BID NOW!

SEHER SHAH

Drawing Biennial 2024
Drawing Room, London, UK
3 May - 3 July 2024

Every two years the Drawing Biennial proves to be a highlight in Drawing Room’s programme – a critically acclaimed exhibition showcasing around 300 drawings from some of the most interesting artists working across the globe today. This year’s Biennial is a vibrant pulse-check of contemporary drawing in 2024, as well as a vital fundraiser that provides Drawing Room with funding for the next two years of activity, supporting artists and our community through championing drawing.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/seher-shah2

PRESS

Artists by another name
Quddus Mirza, The News

The Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024 provided a cohesive and compelling, though diverse, narrative on the looming crisis of our times

(excerpt)

Enveloped in its past and present, the city also fascinates Nazgol Ansarinia. The Iranian-born invoked not only the architectural remains but also socio-political factors that shape external outlets and inner systems. Each one of her Pillars, is composed of an article from the Iranian constitution. The Persian text is rotated on an axis to form capitals not dissimilar to those sighted in Tehran. She cuts the capital, like a piece of cake, to reveal Farsi writing, occasionally decipherable. Ansarinia’s remarkable and courageous sculptures were a reminder of the way state can influence every crevice of human existence. Her other work, Membrane, included casts of city walls marked for demolition. The sensitive imprint looked like human skin. The papier-mâché are in fact the archives of those who rubbed their bodies against the solid yet tactile surfaces, or/ and lived in the buildings.

Seher Shah had reconstructed the metropolis in an intimate language that resembled musical notation. Of Dust and Measure (5-9), revealed ruptures between spaces, suggesting the shadow of surveillance the Karachi-born Shah has experienced like any other South Asian citizen and recalls.

Read: https://www.gagallery.com/press/the-news

ON VIEW

REVERBERATIONS: TEXTILE AS ECHO
Curated by Murtaza Vali

M’barek Bouhchichi, Sayan Chanda, Himali Singh Soin and Swapnaa Tamhane
7 May - 27 July 2024

In Swapnaa Tamhane’s Bird’s-Eye series, mirrors are carefully hand-cut and embroidered by members of the Qasab Kutch Craftswomen Producer Co. Ltd onto fabric vividly colored using natural dyes such as indigo and alizarin, recreating a plan of a remote Kutchi village that the artist found in a vintage design magazine produced in post-independence India. Mirroring and inverting the found pattern, Tamhane transforms an exercise in cartographic control into eye catching ornament. Tamhane’s Achadiya V begins as a drop cloth pinned to the print beds used by master block printer Salemamad Khatri. Absorbing the excess dye and resist that seeps through the fabric being printing on, the drop cloth accumulates a variety of marks, ranging from traditional Ajrakh motifs that Khatri prints regularly to the novel patterns designed by Tamhane based on the interiors of Le Corbusier’s famous Mill Owners’ Association Building in Ahmedabad. These otherwise invisible residues of the printing process are revealed by subsequently dyeing the fabric in indigo, which Tamhane further embellishes with mirrors to create a twinkling liquid surface. Accompanied by the heartbeat-like sound of block printing, Achadiya V is a palimpsest of labor and life in Khatri’s workshop.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/.../reverberations-textile-as-echo

ON VIEW

HERA BÜYÜKTASÇIYAN: DEFENDING ANCIENT WATERS

Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré (CCC OD), Tours, France
29 March 2024 – 5 January 2025

Apart from the current that floods the space as an unexpected wave, we see another element resurfacing in reference to a once thriving craft that produced surfaces through textile that is the rise and fall of the silk industry in and around Tours.
One of the aspects that fostered the economy of the area was sericulture and silk weaving used in various fields, such as for garments, furniture design and interior decoration. The industry that dates back to 15th century through the planting of the white mulberry trees to encourage raising silkworms at abandoned limestone quarries along the Loire,lost its economic importance around late 19th century due to a disease caused by a fungus that infected the caterpillars on the banks of the river that ceased the production of silk.

This tradition is evoked here through technical drawings hung below the artist’s forttages, gifted by the association ‘’Tours Cite de la Soie’’. Drawn by industrial designers on large sheets of graph paper, these red floral motifs are then reproduced in textile form. The red colour is often used in these drawings for the patterns to manifest themselves and become visible. The artist builds a dialogue between these floral patterns that form an imaginary garden with her drawings. These graphite forms, which explore the morphology of fabric and its relationship with skin appear like studies of limbs, where the internal and external merge within one another in a constant movement through threads, pieces of textile in relation to surface and body. The coexistence of these drawings from different timelines and authors becomes an agent in vocalizing the disappearance of the mulberry trees from the region.

The exhibition, curated by Élodie Strœcken, is a co-production between the Centre International d’Art et du Paysage on Vassivière Island and Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/hera-buyuktasciyan-defending-ancient-waters

ON VIEW

REVERBERATIONS: TEXTILE AS ECHO
Curated by Murtaza Vali

M’barek Bouhchichi, Sayan Chanda, Himali Singh Soin and Swapnaa Tamhane
7 May - 27 July 2024

Part of a broader multidisciplinary project titled “we are opposite like that,” Himali Singh Soin’s Mountain, pixelated in the water translates the recordings of ice crystals smashing into each other and a trio of soundscapes that speculate on the disruptive presence of Others such as herself at the earth’s icy poles into a double Ikat tapestry. A labor-intensive process in which a pattern is first carefully marked out and resist dyed on yarn before being woven into fabric, Ikat’s characteristic glitchy striated edges uncannily resemble the pixelated digital audio print. The tapestry was made by master weaver Gajam Govardhan and his family using natural and sustainable materials such as indigo, organic cotton, and ahimsa (non-violent) silk (harvested carefully so as not to harm the silkworms that produce it). These materials are also historically resonant, recalling the extractive colonial histories of indigo cultivation and Gandhi’s promotion of handspun cotton as a political strategy for disrupting colonial trade and achieving self-sufficiency and independence. Delicate hints of a pinkish-red evoke both ancient terracotta artifacts and the iron-rich earth they are excavated from. Displayed as a landscape, the audio print’s jagged white peaks floating in a sea of blue recall the magical and otherworldly polar horizon that inspired Soin’s speculations, while the accompanying soundscape Subcontinentment theorizes alternative imaginations of the future that center South Asian chronologies, cosmologies, epistemologies, and bodies.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/.../reverberations-textile-as-echo

ON VIEW

CHAOUKI CHOUKINI

The 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, 'Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere'
curated by Adriano Pedrosa
20 April - 24 November 2024

Chaouki Choukini has spent over six decades reacting materially to how landscapes evolve and how societies shapeshift throughout history. He settled in Paris in the early 1990s and has continued his work with mostly vertical sculptures up to the present day. While he has worked with bronze, stone, and other materials, this selection of works illustrates his mastery of freeform wooden sculpture, his main craft. His fascination with wenge wood, native to Central Africa, goes hand-in-hand with his use of other African woods in his practice. Besides wenge, the selected pieces also boast carvings in iroko, sipo, and bubinga hardwoods, with occasional uses of oak. For Choukini, wood is a material that is deeply connected to the very earth he examines in his work. His chippings and scrapings normally follow the natural direction of wooden fibres. Be it horizons, abstract concepts, human figures, aerial views of land, bird flights, celestial figures, or tragedies, he treats these themes with inventive geometries and curves. Choukini’s three-dimensional works, dancing between rough and polished, presence and absence, may well be the “second life” of the watercolour sketches that generally impel his pieces.

This is the first time the work of Chaouki Choukini is presented at Biennale Arte.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions.../chaouki-choukini2

CLOSING SOON

HERA BÜYÜKTASÇIYAN

WOMEN, together
National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, Greece
14 December 2023 – 31 May 2024

"Nothing further beyond" (2021) traces the layers of history that underlie a specific architectural ruin--the Arch of Theodosius, erected in A.D. 395 and now situated in Istanbul’s Beyazıt Square. The columns came to be known as “the weeping columns” for the teardrop-like pattern adorning them, however Büyüktaşcıyan later discovered that these shapes were actually meant to represent the club of the divine Greek demigod Hercules where he has used during his 12 missions to conquer the evil. The gate was founded by the emperor Theodosius to symbolically point to the Pillars of Hercules, which according to myth were installed by the demi-god in the far West to mark the end of the known world and guard it from sea monsters. Inscribed with the Latin phrase “Nothing Further Beyond”, the Pillars drew the border of Western civilization, labelling everything further as the “Other” and the unknown as a potential threat which also resonates with the current power and architecture dynamics today.

In her sculptural installation, Büyüktaşcıyan emulates the profound compression of narratives present in the ruins and surface tensions hidden within each layer. By etching the teardrop pattern of the columns into industrial carpets, the artist draws out the formal ambiguity of the ornament, which is both reminiscent of reified/petrified persistence and of state power. Büyüktaşcıyan’s carpets resemble geological strata as well as undulating waves, suggesting a fluidity and softness to the artifacts in contrast to the solidity of its physical realm and its the historical background. With its material poetics, "Nothing further beyond" studies the tension between petrification and softness, as well as destruction and recreation.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/hera-buyuktasciyan17

ON VIEW

SEHER SHAH

Drawing Biennial 2024

Drawing Room, London, UK
3 May - 3 July 2024

Every two years the Drawing Biennial proves to be a highlight in Drawing Room’s programme – a critically acclaimed exhibition showcasing around 300 drawings from some of the most interesting artists working across the globe today. This year’s Biennial is a vibrant pulse-check of contemporary drawing in 2024, as well as a vital fundraiser that provides Drawing Room with funding for the next two years of activity, supporting artists and our community through championing drawing.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/seher-shah2

CLOSING SOON

MICHAEL RAKOWITZ: THE WAITING GARDENS OF THE NORTH
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK
15 July 2023 – 26 May 2024

Michael Rakowitz’s exhibition has been conceived as a garden that will continue to grow and develop during its run. Alongside newly created artworks, the installation will present a collection of plants at different stages of their growing process. Born out of collaboration with people living in Gateshead and Newcastle with experience of forced displacement, Rakowitz’s ruined garden acts as a metaphor for the overlapping histories of displacement, war, oppression, trauma and adaptation, that people, cultural objects and plants carry with them. Collaborating with the organisations The Comfrey Project, West End Refugee Service (WERS), Scotswood Garden, Dilston Physic Garden, Herb Hub, and Baltic’s Language Café has been instrumental to realising the project and its ongoing activation.

The Waiting Gardens of the North is centred around a relief panel from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BCE) in Nineveh depicting the Assyrian gardens, believed to have preceded what is now known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The original panel has been housed in the British Museum since 1856. The exhibition sees Rakowitz recreate this panel in a monumental scale, using his signature collage technique with food packaging, locally sourced from South Asian and African grocery stores.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/michael-rakowitz-the-waiting-gardens-of-the-north

ON VIEW

HERA BÜYÜKTAŞCIYAN

The Life of Things
Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz, Austria
27 April - 1 September 2024

With the spatial installation Destroy your house, build up a boat, save life* , artist Hera Büyüktaşcıyan revolves around notions of departure, foundations and contested histories vocalized through physical and imaginary landscapes merged within one another.

The title of the work is a quotation taken from the “Story of the Flood” found on “The Epic of Atrahasis,” in a Babylonian cuneiform tablet within the British Museum. According to the inscription, the God Enlil -Ruler of the Earth, plans to destroy mankind through a devastating flood. Yet, God Enki -Ruler of Water, warns Atra-Hasis by instructing him to build a boat to be protected from rising waters. The description of this imaginary boat, also known as “Noah’s Ark,” becomes a departure point for Istanbul born artist, to reflect upon uncanny grounds in connection to land and roots, loss and perseverance, past and future. The boat acts as a metaphor for the rescue of belongings, as well as a source where fragments of memory are transferred from one context to another through a traumatic upheaval, exile and other forms of societal breakdown. Büyüktaşçıyan resonates with the notion of unknown futures and the unrooted foundations through this epic story, by appropriating a ceiling painting of a suggestive landscape, originally made for the domestic dwellings of the Siniossoglou Apartment** in Istanbul. The local area, then known commonly as Pera where the building is located, was witness to a massive, forced exodus of minority populations in the mid-20th century. The sudden departure of the original dwellers of the building after the 1955 pogrom, remains as a layer of ruptures evoked by the installation. The installation consists of a structure formed by rolled carpets, bearing a decomposed image of an unknown landscape, invoking both the act of a sudden departure as well as the carpet as a foundational element of belonging and a surface that recollects the trajectory of our own record of time and traces.

This piece was originally commissioned by SALT Beyoglu in Istanbul, 2015.
** Siniossoglou Apartment, building is currently functioning as SALT Beyoglu.

More information: https://www.gagallery.com/exhibitions-worldwide/hera-buyuktasciyan-and-michael-rakowitz