The Venice Biennale 58th International
Art Exhibition, one of
the world’s leading art events,
will be held between May 11 –
November 24 this year. Coordinated
by Istanbul Foundation
for Culture and Arts (İKSV), the
Pavilion of Turkey will feature
the artist İnci Eviner’s work entitled
We, Elsewhere. Curated
by Zeynep Oz, the exhibition
to be featured at the Pavilion
of Turkey will take place at the
Arsenale, one of the main venues
of the Venice Biennale.
İnci Eviner, who will transform
the Pavilion of Turkey into a
stage for We, Elsewhere, gives
place to architectural elements,
videos, sound installations and
objects that she remodelled by
setting out from her own drawings,
thus creating different sensory and visual layers.
We, Elsewhere, stands for a work related to spaces that emerged as a result
of collective displacement. The exhibition, whose preparations are
still in process, will invite the audience to meditate upon how individuals
in these spaces react and interact with one another and with their own
memories. This work, for which İnci Eviner used reconfigured objects
and imaginary characters that she created with various sound elements,
will present the audience of Pavilion of Turkey with the sense of being
lost, erased and elsewhere. The space, characters and objects created
for the Pavilion of Turkey will present a narrative akin to the struggles
cited in We Refugees, which was written in 1943 by German political
scientist Hannah Arendt.
“These figures are constantly changing places through the space so as
to find their other halves. This endeavor is actually an attempt to recapture
their interrupted and invalidated memory and bodies. While
these figures create this setting, they find themselves obligated to pick
up mythologies and memories, the habits of everyday life, their joy and
sorrow and put them into place. I try to keep myself in and out of events to witness all of this. The responsibility of being a witness is in the questioning
of being ‘us’,” said İnci Eviner of We, Elsewhere.
Regarding the project, curator Zeynep Oz explained: “Eviner in this project
uses the architectural structure as a basis that brings together the
elements of movement such as video and live performance, thus reflecting
on matters of migration and confinement in constantly changing subjectivity
formation.”
We, Elsewhere, also offers an in-depth look at the art practice of İnci
Eviner, who scrutinizes in her works how the individual’s body movements
shape their spirit and behavior. Just as in the previous works of the
artist, the beginning and backbone of We, Elsewhere, are grounded on
her drawings. Shaped around these drawings, the work features a multilayered
structure created by the juxtaposition of different disciplines.
For her work entitled We, Elsewhere, İnci Eviner works with people from
different disciplines. The architectural design of the project is carried out
by Birge Yıldırım Okta and Gurkan Okta, while sound design is made by
Tolga Tuzun. Videos to be projected within the Pavilion of Turkey are undertaken
by performing artists and dancers Canan Yucel Pekicten, Melih
Kırac and Gulden Arsal. The cinematography of the videos is carried out
by Aydın Sarıoğlu, while the post-production is done by Cem Gokcimen
and Cem Perin. Okay Karadayılar and Ali Taptık (ONAGORE) undertake
the project’s visual identity and the design of the new publication, which
will meet the audience with the launch of the Pavilion of Turkey.
