Emily Stokes in conversation with November Paynter, Director, Artist Pension Trust Dubai and freelance curator based in Istanbul. March 17, 2008
Emre Huner, Panoptikon, 2005
How does Turkey fit into the region?
I have been working within the Turkish art scene for over five years and although this region is often reduced to very specific geographical areas, Turkey continues to hover in and between many of these zones. It is an interesting position for the arts and especially the younger generation of artists, whose practice has been informed by tense regional relationships on the one side and European accession talks on the other.
Which contemporary Middle Eastern artist most interests you at the moment?
An artist who has received much attention this year in Turkey and abroad is Emre Hüner.
How did you come across his work?
Hüner presented two works at last year's 10th Istanbul Biennial. He is also one of the artists participating in the recently initiated Dubai branch of the Artist Pension Trust, a financial services firm for artists. His work Panoptikon is going to be shown in the Bidoun programme of video screenings during this year's Art Dubai Fair.
To create his animations, Hüner collects hundreds of objects in personal encyclopaedias. He then brings these images together to create imaginary worlds, such as that of Panoptikon, which combines an Ottoman-era miniature aesthetic with scientific representations of invention and war. While Panoptikon hints at a dystopian future for society in this region and beyond, a more recent work, Boumont, which was filmed on handheld camera, focuses specifically on Istanbul and the story of a lone man wandering the inner city's already deserted and decaying industrial areas.
Does his work tell us anything about the way that contemporary art is developing in the region?
The art coming out of Turkey is diverse and does not follow such a clear line of thought and key thematics as that of some of the other art scenes in the region. So while the practice of archiving is fairly common, Hüner's approach to cataloguing the world around him is unusual: it is not about noting key happenings, events and images (whether real or factitious), but rather about creating the possibility for these moments to be imagined. While he touches on the problematic political relationships of the region, he does so through references to independent layers of history that he converges to present mythical, yet recognisible events.
A key theme in Hüner's work, which is also being touched upon more frequently in artistic practice across this region - because of the rapid growth and density of some of its larger cities, as well as the tension in reconciling new culture with heritage and tradition - is the effect of excessive consumption, dense population growth and shifting customs and beliefs. To describe a world that is being planned and progressed too rapidly in the wrong directions, Hüner has filmed the forgotten areas of Istanbul, previously unexplored by artists in preference of sites of development. While Istanbul's rash of new high-rise housing and gated communities may speak of a certain prescribed future, one that craves documentation and theory-based response, it is the decaying inner-city industrial zones and the environments of Hüner's animations that open the future and the possibility for change to the imagination.
Monday, 17 March 2008
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Bashir Borlakov
The scenery is magnificent. The scale and drama that make up the vista of crags, crevices and clouds, breathtaking. Yet the panorama in this photograph is a stage for one moment, or as Borlakov describes it 'one sentence' in any number of stories. While nature continues timelessly all around, seven men, mere dots in this vast landscape, pull determinedly on a rope. Whether they are rescuing someone, lowering one of their number, or pulling a hidden load is unclear. If this were a film the result of their endeavours might appear in the next frame, but instead the sentence they write remains open.
There are six other images in this series, all shot in the Caucasus Mountain Range in Russia near the Georgian border. The composition of the land is strikingly different in each one, as are the acts these backdrops both conceal and reveal. In the corner of one image, two men batter something with a rock; in another, a bundle is thrown from the trunk of a car; in the next, a man is elevated by two white geese; eight women walk in line across a plateau; uniformed men undress; a group of boys stand tentatively looking over a cliff edge. The imagination runs riot. Amidst this awesome sweep of nature, even the most microscopic human presence demands explanation, a before and after. Is the body from the car the same one that was beaten and is here being pulled back to be identified?
In a place of Greek legend, the mountains where Prometheus was chained to a rock, myths are easily born and tales of the immortal, heroes and tortured soles can be infinitely cited. So while Biblical imagery (a pilgrimage, a crucifixion and resurrection) appear obvious in their implication, references to political turmoil, corruption and racial hatred can just as easily be applied. In the end, Borlakov's works reference all and none of these sources and he simply lets the blind lead the blind and the sighted close their eyes.
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