Ateş Alpar – Possibility and Probability
May 13 @ 18:30 - July 5 @ 18:30
Opening: Tuesday, May 13, 18:30
Curators: Melih Aydemir, Yıldız Öztürk
Ateş Alpar’s solo exhibition Possibility and Probability will take place at Depo from May 13 to July 5, 2025. The exhibition explores Alpar’s practice concerning space, object and body through historical and contemporary forms of domination. Curated by Melih Aydemir and Yıldız Öztürk, the exhibition traces the artist’s personal life to weave a broader narrative addressing borders, security, surveillance mechanisms and dispossession.
The methodologies employed in the exhibition focus on rethinking histories that have been ignored, erased or decontextualized. When and how everyday objects become politicized, the links between individual stories and collective memory are among the main questions of the exhibition. Possibility and Probability approaches colonization as an ongoing process and seeks a decolonial perspective beyond institutional frameworks. Beyond documentation and representation, Alpar focuses on the possibilities of resistance offered by space, objects and language while resurfacing the possibilities made invisible by colonialism.
Ateş Alpar (Nusaybin/Mardin) examines borders, identity, archives and the manifestations of cultural destruction across diverse forms of domination in their multidisciplinary practice. Through materials, recorded sounds and imagery, they explore the position of bodies, communities and geographies within homogenized historical narratives. By proposing critical alternatives to normative constructs, Alpar highlights the ambiguity of boundaries, focusing on micro-spaces to unsettle dominant social memory. Alpar approaches encounters with power dynamics through ruptures and processes of reconstruction rather than continuities, contemplating the possibilities of archiving and memory-making, particularly for queer communities. Alpar lives and works in Istanbul.
Curator and art worker Melih Aydemir (Berlin-Istanbul) explores intersectionality through decolonization, labor, queerness and marginalized communities in their practice. Aydemir worked with Protocinema (2017–2020) and took part in the Çanakkale-based artist initiative sub. Aydemir currently works as the head of exhibitions and communications at SANATORIUM.
Academic and art writer Yıldız Öztürk (Istanbul) works in the fields of critical museology, feminist curatorial methodology, access to culture and precarity. She has been teaching at the university and organizing workshops since 2004. As a grant of the TÜBİTAK International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme, she was based in the United Kingdom from 2023 to 2024. She studied audience development policies and social inclusion at Museum Studies at the University of Leicester.