Arter hosts Bilge Friedlaender’s solo exhibition “Words, Numbersi Lines” and Nil Yalter’s exhibition “Off the Record” until 15 January 2017.
The exhibition, curated by Mira Friedlaender and Işın Önol, brings together works of the artist which have never been shown in Turkey nor exhibited elsewhere since the
1980s. Words, Numbers, Lines also marks the artist’s first solo exhibition since she passed away in 2000.
The works in Words, Numbers, Lines centre upon Bilge Friedlaender’s rigorous investigation of created forms such as “line” and “square” as expressions of the relationship
between humans and nature. The exhibition focuses on a specific period (1971-1983) of Friedlaender’s production, researching the infinite possibilities of a line, a torn line,
and a square that defies gravity. She produced expansive yet intimate material for investigation. During this decade, even though she did not identify herself as a minimalist,
Friedlaender develops a modest visual language utilising rather simple materials and meticulously continues her almost experimental search. She was in constant dialogue
with her own work through her writing, questioning herself, and asking philosophical questions that remain compelling, and grant us access to her ideas. Engaging with
the universal experiences of gravity, horizon, and perceptions of duality, Friedlaender created a body of work that is even more relevant today.
Words, Numbers, Lines presents Friedlaender’s transcendent works, while the “conversation with herself” in the exhibition publication offers a personal and professional
account of the artist. The essay is a fictive interview expressing Friedlaender’s artistic concerns, edited and compiled by the curators from a vast variety of text selected from
published and unpublished material up to this day. The publication also includes an essay by Ahu Antmen, who knew and reviewed the artist in the 90s. Antmen brings a
sensitive and historical reading of the work, primarily referring to the artist’s practices in Turkey, giving us a view of Friedlaender’s production towards the end of her life.
Lewis Johnson, another contributor to the publication, puts Friedlaender’s selected works in the exhibition in a wider philosophical context, and Gregory Volk engages with
the deep source of the work via material and touch, while connecting the artist to American cultural history.
And curated by Eda Berkmen, the exhibition “Off the Record” is a thematic overview of Yalter’s hybrid installations that combine painting, photography, writing, collage,
performance, and video. Yalter’s work explores individual’s strategies for survival in the face of society’s control mechanisms and norms, focusing on omitted facts, invisible
people, enclosed places and repressed emotions. The exhibition title refers to these subjects that are denied a place in official histories.
With an acute awareness of the way space, body and knowledge are manipulated by authorities to maintain control
over the masses, Yalter looks to the margins. She documents the struggles and dwellings of the unseen members of
society: the labourers, women and immigrants. In her research, Yalter brings together diverse disciplines such as folk
tradition, literature, ethnology, natural sciences and philosophy. She creates a unique visual language that fuses fact
and fiction, as well as documentary, poetry and performance. Just as a shaman inhabits other realms and bodies
during trance, Yalter leaves the confines of identity to deal with personal and collective trauma.
Yalter focuses extensively on the subject of immigration. She documents the struggles of migrant workers, through
objects, visuals and video interviews that she collected using ethnographic methods. Off the Record brings together
a selection of works from the artist’s “Temporary Dwellings” (1974-1977), “Immigrants” (1976-2016) and “Exile is
a Hard Job” (1983) series that are chosen for the context of Istanbul and the specificities of the exhibition space. Beyond
their significance as historical documents, these works are also flexible, permeable, and multilingual fictional
spaces that allow the audience to observe different points of view.
The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual publication with texts by cultural theorist Başak Ertür, curator Fatoş
Üstek, cultural anthropologist Bernard Dupaigne, historian Philippe Artières, alongside an essay by Eda Berkmen
elaborating on the conceptual framework of the exhibition.
