15/01/2015
Curated by Sabancı University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences member Ayşe Gül Altınay and Işın Önol, the “Mobilizing Memory: Women Witnessing” exhibition held at Depo in September and October 2014 was extensively featured in the international feminist art journal n.paradoxa.
The UK-based international feminist art journal n.paradoxa contains an extensive coverage of the “Mobilizing Memory: Women Witnessing” exhibition organized by Sabancı University Gender and Women’s Studies Forum, Columbia Global Centers l Turkey, and Columbia University Center for the Study of Social Differences and DEPO. The coverage includes interviews with curators Sabancı University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences member Ayşe Gül Altınay and Işın Önol discussing the purpose of the exhibition, the preparation process, and the contributions of the artists to discussions on issues of gender, memory and war.
Featuring the works of woman artists from Turkey and the world, the exhibition will be available for viewing at the Kuntshalle Exnergasse in Vienna between March 17th and April 3rd, 2015. The exhibition will be accompanied by panel discussions and talks.
Initially held at Depo in September and October 2014, the exhibition included works by artists Gülçin Aksoy, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, Hakikat Adalet Hafıza Merkezi (Center for Truth, Justice and Memory), Gülsün Karamustafa, Susan Meiselas, Nar Photos (Serra Akcan, Fatma Çelik, Gülşin Ketenci, Aylin Kızıl, Serpil Polat), Lorie Novak, Emine Gözde Sevim and Aylin Tekiner.
The feminist art work displayed in this exhibit imagines memory as part of a larger politics of resistance. It mobilizes memories of past and present violence precisely to create the conditions and the motivations for social change. Bringing together women artists many of whom are themselves direct witnesses to oppression and terror, the exhibit also reveals moments of resilience, resistance, and creative survival. The artists gathered here use memory in innovative ways. They foreground unofficial acts of witness and forms of commemoration--embodied practices, performances, photography, testimony, street actions—that provide alternative histories and different political imaginaries than do official archives, memorials, museums, and state commemorations. They make visible not only violent crimes and their gendered dimensions, but also the intimate texture of lives and communities that have survived or are fighting to survive immense destruction.
Exhibition Catalog: http://socialdifference.columbia.edu/publications/mobilizing-memory-women-witnessing-exhibition-catalogue/
n.paradoxa: http://www.ktpress.co.uk/nparadoxa-volume-details.asp?volumeid=35
Kuntshalle Exnergasse: http://www.wuk.at/WUK/KUNST/Kunsthalle_Exnergasse/KEX