mâzîk

Opening: Thursday, June 23, 18:00

Developed by Alev Ersan, İbrahim Alam and İlyas Odman through collaboration and interventions in each other’s work, mâzîk comes out of a longing to sense the presence of different generations of queers, by means of attending to the materials of time and language, questions of healing, transition and aging; and a need for darkness and solitude.

The exhibition takes its title from the mâzîks in İbrahim Alam’s work, meaning “small Aleppo oak” or “mini galls” in Kurdish, made by the gall wasps’ habitation and production of larvae on the Aleppo oak. Aleppo oak (or Quercus infectoria – “inflamed oak”), which is able to heal itself even though its habitat is regularly burned and destroyed, is used in textile dyeing and ink production, and is also known for its ability to heal wounds and infections.

In mâzîk, the artists attempt to create a garden, which will transform the space during the exhibition through performances, recordings and the use of natural light filtering into the ground floor of Depo. Based on the garden descriptions in Derek Jarman’s diary Modern Nature (1989-1990), they transpose the gardener’s field of view and relationship with time to the scale of an exhibition. While mâzîk is set up as a continually changing site, where two people visiting the exhibition at different dates or hours will have different receptions, it also is a call to wind down. The music in the exhibition space invites the visitor to a slow-motion dance floor; just as the texts and sounds changed by repetition welcome the audience to spend more time inside, to listen, to read, and to loiter in the half-light.

Image: Dry pieces of Aleppo oak, İbrahim Alam

 Booklet