by Maja Markovic
Acquainting the sites and centres of her creativity with ‘a new situationism’, Istanbulian artist Sibel Horada’s penchant for the unfamiliar finds her in states of productivity not in a studio but in the movement and change of roads, trains, planes, boats. Prompted by what one might call visual impressions, she states that the thesis behind each of her works is a circumstantial and ‘project-based’ translation of thought into physical metaphor. However, ‘project’, she states, implies that there is a kind of preconception to the work, whereas her ‘origin is often a rare and strong image or a visual idea that moves [her] in a certain way, which develops and gets articulated in the process through various modes of exchange, translation and transplantation.’ If we were to discuss the origins of her work, rather than a preconception, one might call it a contemplation transmuted into physical action; change. To retranslate a mental process into a physical one would connote temporal disparity between the contemplation and the act, and yet in her ‘process,’ Horada attempts to negotiate time through an idea of origin that occurs through a continuous simultaneity between thought, action, and production. Rather than two processes marching side-by-side, she attempts to create a fusion of the active and mental elements that perpetuate the continuous retranslation of body to mind and back again. (…)