The works of Buşra Çeğil, Delal Eken, Xebat Bayram and Fatoş Güneri Kartal, who realized their projects with the support of Istanbul Rotary Art Fund, are on display at the Elgiz Museum. Curated by Begüm Güney, the exhibition titled Forms of Remembrance invites visitors to an intellectual journey on the traces of memory.
Istanbul Rotary Art Fund
The Rotary Club of Istanbul restructured the “Istanbul Rotary Art Award Competition and Exhibition” program, which was launched in the 2010-2011 period, as the “Istanbul Rotary Art Fund” with a new approach in the 2023-2024 period. The program, to which artists between the ages of 25-40 from different provinces of Turkey applied, was accompanied by a selection committee consisting of experts in their fields. As a result of the evaluation of the committee consisting of Ayda Elgiz Güreli, Ayşe Umur, Fatoş Irwen, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Işın Önol, İpek Duben, Nural Denker, M. Özalp Birol and Tolga Kılıç, Buşra Çeğil, Delal Eken, Xebat Bayram and Fatoş Güneri Kartal were awarded funding.
15 Years of Story
Stating that they have renewed the award program they have been running since 2010 in accordance with the spirit of the time, Nural Denker, Founding President of Istanbul Rotary Club, said: “With the Istanbul Rotary Art Fund program, we aim to contribute to the development of contemporary art in our country while supporting the production of young artists at the beginning of their careers. We are proud that the artists who were awarded in the past years and took part in our exhibitions are now exhibiting their works in important cultural and artistic institutions in Turkey and abroad, and are achieving new successes with new projects. We continue this 15-year story with the same enthusiasm as on the first day. Our greatest wish is to reach more young people and bring new works to our country.”
Delal Eken
Curator Begüm Güney pointed out that in the exhibition “Forms of Remembrance”, which consists of works in which memory, space, sound and ritual are reproduced in different forms, each work asks the question “Is it possible to remember?” in a different language. Güney said, “The art practice of Delal Eken, Fatoş Güneri Kartal, Xebat Bayram and Buşra Çeğil accumulates around the same circular silence. The coming together of these artists, each of whom produces with a different material and in a different medium, is realized through their common intuition that touches time, space and memory. Sometimes they reshape the forgotten, sometimes they suggest other ways of remembering by tracing a sound or a light,” he added.
Works in the Exhibition
In the installation “Bir Fincan Kahvenin Kırk Yıl Hatırı Var” (A Cup of Coffee Has Forty Years of Memory), Buşra Çeğil points to the fragility of remembering and the transforming nature of belonging. Turkish Coffee, an image of remembrance in the artist’s culture, also plays an important role in her daily rituals. Çeğil created a unique texture with the earthy-looking chamotte clay and produced the entire work in ceramic.
Wastes and ruins share the same fate as cultural destruction left to be forgotten. The surfacing of what is ignored gives it a new meaning when intervened. Just as memory returns in other forms when it is tried to be erased. Delal Eken’s installation “Shadow of Lost Light” scans the traces of the past with the light beams reflected from many angles on the wall of a shredded waste pile. The partnership between a covered-up culture and an object left to decay renders visible the fragile yet stubborn structure of memory.
Fatoş Güneri Kartal’s installation “Multiple Conservation”, inspired by a sketch of a container city, reminds us that shelter is more relational than physical and constructs space as a memory that accumulates. The organized and cramped plane the artist constructs with cans represents the daily existence of subjects squeezed into their living spaces in an uncanny state of shelter.
