Loading Events
  • This event has passed.

« All Events

Silvina Der-Meguerditchian – Memory without a Place

18/04/2014 @ 11:00 - 25/05/2014 @ 17:00

[cmsmasters_row][cmsmasters_column data_width=”2/3″][cmsmasters_text]

18 April – 25 May 2014

One of the leading visual motifs in Der-Meguerditchian’s oeuvre is cords of various forms that come in red. Presented as wool threads, long strings and braids, they beget a wide range of associations, which evoke mostly organic structures such as blood vessels, neural systems, blood spills and spider webs. It feels as if they have an organic integrity and texture, at times recalling closely interwoven fabric patterns. These fibers seem to be unraveling from where they belong, driven away, scattered, and fractured. Yet, they don’t lose contact entirely with the site of origin. One end of the thread maintains its touch with this unity.

The interaction between personal experiences and collective memory is a decisive dynamic in the works of Der-Meguerditchian. Her ancestors had to migrate from Anatolia to Argentina due to ceaseless sufferings in the aftermath of the 1915 genocide and this autobiographical element has been a pivotal factor shaping her work. It becomes possible to re-read the red threads in the artist’s work through a geographical specificity in this light: as marks of lives that are ruthlessly torn away from their soil which nonetheless persist to sustain their bonds to it through various practices of memory. In that sense, Der-Meguerditchian’s carpets in the exhibition reveal the hope of healing the remaining wounds of having been uprooted; for soothing the suffering souls and embracing the wounded ones through acts of weaving and suturing. The portraits of family members, relatives, neighbors and fellow country people are brought together on the same plane through the figural patterns of weaving that belongs to the Anatolian geography.

What took place a hundred years ago is not only the mass elimination of people. The fact that a cultural accumulation that extends over two millennia has been ignored, recklessly looted and obliterated is a catastrophe in itself. The collective project Houshamadyan (www.houshamadyan.org), which the artist realized in collaboration with the historian Vahé Tachjian, works against this process of effacing. The videos produced by Der-Meguerditchian in the framework of this project and exhibited along with objects borrowed from family heritages set out to reproduce the everyday life in Armenian towns and villages during the Ottoman era.

The first exhibition took place in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation in it’s main house in Berlin.

[/cmsmasters_text][/cmsmasters_column][cmsmasters_column data_shortcode_id=”orpbogjlkm” data_width=”1/3″][cmsmasters_text shortcode_id=”8v7ppc8lri” animation_delay=”0″]

[/cmsmasters_text][/cmsmasters_column][/cmsmasters_row]

Details

Start:
18/04/2014 @ 11:00
End:
25/05/2014 @ 17:00
Event Category:

Venue

Depo İstanbul
DEPO / Tütün Deposu Lüleci Hendek Caddesi No.12 Tophane
İstanbul, 34425 Turkey
Phone:
+90 (212) 292 39 56 - 57