ARTISTS FROM TURKEY FEATURED AT DOCUMENTA 14

Documenta 14 includes several works by artists from Turkey in both Athens and Kassel. Banu Cennetoğlu’s work ‘Gurbet’s Diary’ (27.07.1995–08.10.1997) (2016-7) in Athens is dedicated to Gurbetelli Ersöz, who was a journalist, and the only woman to hold the position of editor at a pro-Kurdish newspaper. After being arrested and tortured, she joined the guerilla, keeping a journal from 1995 until 1997 when she was killed. After its first publication in Germany in 1998, the diary was published in Turkey in 2014, but banned shortly after. The lithographic slabs of ‘Gurbet’s Diary’ contain the pages of the diary, ready to be printed again. Her work ‘BEINGSAFEISSCARY’ (2017) in Kassel consists of ten aluminum letters borrowed from the Fridericianum and six letters cast in brass after the existing ones, based on graffiti existing on a wall at the National Technical University of Athens.

Left: Banu Cennetoğlu, BEINGSAFEISSCARY (2017), Ten aluminum letters borrowed from the Fridericianum and six letters cast in brass after the existing ones, Based on graffiti existing on a wall at the National Technical University of Athens as of April 6, 2017, 57.5 × 1085 × 1 cm overall Coproduced with Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen, Sitterwerk, Switzerland, installation view at Friedrichsplatz, Kassel, documenta 14. photo: Frieze
Right: Nevin Aladag, ‘Music Room (Athens)’, 2017, installation view at documenta 14 Athens 2017

In Nevin Aladağ’s installation / performance ‘Music Room’ in Athens, items of furniture and household objects turn into resonating bodies that develop their own acoustic properties attributable to their shapes as evocative of the human body. In the process, prevailing notions of functionality, ergonomics, and purity of sound are called into question. Her installation entitled ‘Jali​’ (2017) in Kassel consists of glazed ceramics. Gülsün Karamustafa’s installation ‘The Apartment Building’ (2012) and Köken Ergun’s two-channel video projection ‘I, Soldier’ (2005) are part of the collection exhibition of Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) at Fridericianum in collaboration with documenta 14.
The works will be on view in Athens until 18 July and in Kassel until 17 September 2017.