Dilek Winchester – Attending the Void

12 September – 3 November 2019

Opening: Wednesday, September 11, 18:30

Dilek Winchester’s solo exhibition Attending the Void consists of a site-specific installation by the same name that spans across the ground floor of Depo. Following meetings and correspondence with 89 people between May and September 2019, 81 pedestals borrowed from 44 different locations were brought together in the exhibition space. These pedestals coming from 44 different art institutions and organisations including museums, exhibition and research centers, galleries, artists’ initiatives, not-for-profit art spaces, art initiatives without permanent spaces, as well as boards and bodies organizing student exhibits are featured in the exhibition as a representation of the ‘public space’ the arts create.

The list of institutions and individuals acting as intermediaries is an artist-centered, subjective list, defined by the artist in the following words: “It is comprised of institutions, initiatives, organisations I have been involved in, nourished by or worked with as an artist, did research on, those that exhibited artworks of mine or my friends, which I have followed as an art viewer, whose influences I observed on my own artistic production, which I wrote or expressed opinions on – which, in short, populate my world, as structures that constitute the public I am part of.”

In her conceptual works, Winchester focuses on subjects such as language, translation, alphabet reforms, theater, oral history and the expression of emotions. The artist, whose artistic practice is based on participation and collaboration, is on this particular occasion inviting the artists and art professionals in her own social network to participate in Attending the Void through acts (or requests) of borrowing/giving. These pedestals marked by their own exhibition memories and waiting to be used in future exhibits, collected from different art spaces in Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakır and İzmir not only serve as the memory of dozens of past exhibitions as the display units reflecting the variety of artworks exhibited upon them, but also bring to Depo the possibility, potential and expectation for dozens of exhibitions to come, to be imagined or to be worked towards – even if never to materialize – with the blank space they embody.

Dilek Winchester studied at Central Saint Martin’s College in London. Selected exhibitions include 206 Rooms of Silence: Etudes on Prinkipo Greek Orphanage, Galata Rum Okulu (2018); Aichi Triennale (2016); Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu (2015); ‘A Solo Show’, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (2013); HomeWorks 6, Ashkal Alwan (2013) and Selling Snails in the Muslim Neighbourhood, Westfalischer Kunstverein (2012). She lives and works in Istanbul.

icon-file-text Booklet
Dilek Winchester
Ayşe H. Köksal
Erman Ata Uncu

Press

Kasım – Aralık 2019
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