Hollow and Broken: A State of the World, a new installation by Gülsün Karamustafa, will be presented at the Türkiye Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Karamustafa’s installation will comprise an interconnection of sculptural works from found materials, inviting viewers to reflect on the current state of the world. Artist also discovers the tragic feeling of a tumultuous reality and issues threatening humanity.
“What I am dealing within this work is the state of a world hollowed out to the core by wars, earthquakes, migration and nuclear peril unleashed at every turn, threatening humankind while nature is ceaselessly scathed and the environment made sick,’’ said Karamustafa noting that
she attempts to physically and emotionally summon into existence this phenomenon: the emptiness, the hollowness, the brokenness produced by the devastation that has become commonplace, whose pace becomes ever more impossible to keep up with, by the unimaginable grief that keeps on striking again and again at relentless intervals, by empty values, identity struggles and brittle human relationships.
Space plays a central role in the exhibition for the artist, championing unconventional methods and disparate materials, exploring themes of turmoil and portraying “the world, a battlefield” as an “endlessly shifting ground”. In an element of the installation, the artist alludes to the perpetual conflicts among faiths that, throughout history, have never ceased fighting one another.
The Türkiye Pavilion exhibition is coordinated by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Türkiye, with the contribution of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, with the global partnership and airline partnership of Turkish Airlines and with the production and publication support of SAHA Association.
