Broken Memories: Talk with Andréas Lang, Refik Akyüz, Serdar Darendeliler, Aylin Vartanyan and Nayat Karaköse

Thursday, May 11, 18:30

As part of the exhibition Broken Memories, on view at Depo until June 24, a talk will be held with the participation of the artist Andréas Lang, curators Refik Akyüz and Serdar Darendeliler, together with Aylin Vartanyan and Nayat Karaköse. Aylin Vartanyan is an academic who works on post-memory and conflict transformation and has contributed a text to the artist’s book with the same name which will be published next month. Nayat Karaköse is the Program Coordinator at Hrant Dink Foundation and is an expert in the fields of collective memory, memory spaces and memorialization practices.

“Andréas Lang’s photographs are comprised of the frames that voice the bearers of agony, such as decaying ruins, landscapes, and forests, or sometimes that blurs the truth through things that came together ineptly. Lang conveys the truth via the connections he establishes with the structures that are consciously left to deteriorate or have become estranged to its origin because of losing its form. In Lang’s photographs, the bearers of the truth, thus agony, are the ruins of stone buildings, monuments, and churches. The narratives of suffering that are ingrained in the stones and lands that appear in Lang’s photographs cannot be entirely erased, nor can they remain standing safely.”
(Aylin Vartanyan Dilaver, excerpt from her text in the book, titled “Photographs Tracing the Pain”)

“At the first glance, Broken Memories may seem like a collection of work consisting primarily of pleasant landscape photographs, architectural photographs of various old buildings and sites, or even photographs with orientalist elements. Yet, when you follow the “visual archaeology” path adopted by Andréas Lang, you encounter a work that unfolds layer by layer with the stories underlying what is visible on the surface. The burden of countless pains embedded in this geography, tolerated destructions, gaps in historical narratives, conflicting realities, state of being trapped in the cleavage between conservatism and secularism, the indifference towards memory sites, and an indescribable timelessness are just some of the things that Broken Memories conceals/reveals.”
(Refik Akyüz & Serdar Darendeliler, excerpt from their text in the exhibition flyer, titled “Broken memories made visible as one excavates beneath the surface”)

The talk will be in Turkish and English.

For detailed information:
Andréas Lang – Broken Memories