Hatice Utkan
Siemens Sanat art center opens the new season with an exclusive exhibition titled “Other Worlds.” The exhibition focuses on numerous issues regarding communication but the main theme is not communication, but rather the search for a main theme.
The themes of the exhibition address the question of expressing ourselves from a current social perspective, and of when we are faced with realities such as the decline of social space, the emergence of societal divisions and counter-societal sentiments which result in disruptions within our identity as an individual. How can we protect ourselves against this threat to our existence as an individual? How can we re-structure our identity in subjective and cultural terms? What is being underlined here is not the identity obsession of societies which leads to obscurity and homogeneity in the human mind. This situation legitimates, as a right, the devastating consequences suffered by a majority of the world’s population. Therefore it is now clear that healing the spirit of the time does not depend on a search for identity as today we live in a society that consists of more identity fragmentation than ever before.
The main theme of the exhibition is not the communication between cultural or social indicators within the origins of the works. What is essential is to become conscious of intercultural differences and to see whether the creative subject can turn self-assessment into a tool for self-awareness. What is essential is not whether the works of the artists are in harmony with each other or in relation to one another, but rather what is of essence is the experience of passing from one work to another, the formation and fragmentation of the works and what kind of stance they engender within the viewer.
The subject can only achieve his own liberation and opacity by utilizing his own feedback and maintaining the most open relationship with himself despite the hectic pace of daily life. Today, the social categories of common life are all intermingled. The main theme of Youssef Tabti’s work is to produce new actors to fight the mindset of current depressed and fragmented individuals – experimenting with ideas of self-expression, building new perspectives and thus forming a perceptual landscape by an experimentation involving various relationships.
Tamas Oszvald brings down the walls of a fortress which forces foreigners into cultural blocks, seeking more interconnected paths, he is aware of the cultural differences and his work searches for experimental and social forms that will help turn the individual behavior of the subjects into self-evaluation tools.
Roza El-Hassan argues that the independence of the subject must be protected (even if it leads to loneliness) in the face of a social order that pushes compassion aside and is rife with violence. According to the artist, this is the most meaningful and reliable stance against homogeneity. In the face of an oppressive social order the subject must form close and intimate relationships with others, and in turn, personally accept the necessity of a process of self discovery and prioritize self-development.
We should maintain distance from social categorization, therefore leading the individual away from homogeneity and towards an opportunity to be liberated. Touraine says, ”The subject lives in the world but does not belong to the world.” Thus the idea of the individual provides a strong weapon against homogeneity. This stance points to the ways in which the lost subject must be reconstructed, and how we may develop ourselves and our defenses against the destruction and fragmentation caused by homogeneity within society.