“Reaching for the World” Is it Possible?

The exhibition “Reaching for the World,” opened at Kasa Gallery, focuses on the human effort to transcend boundaries and connect with the environment, while exploring the concept of “home.” We had an interview with the artists Özge Enginöz, Gözde Mulla, and the curator of the exhibition, Gamze Öztürk.

The “Reaching for the World” exhibition, curated by Gamze Öztürk and featuring the works of Özge Enginöz and Gözde Mulla, delves deeply into the connection between humans and the world, while exploring this web of relationships through the concept of home. We conducted an interview with the artists and the curator about the effort of “reaching for the world,” the concepts of home and family, and their artistic practices.

You both have been working on the theme of “home” from different perspectives for a while. What does “home” represent in your works?

Gözde Mulla: First and foremost, I choose to imagine and think about home as a purely architectural space. I do this while setting aside the subjective, private, and closed nature that is conceptually associated with “home.” Approaching it as a structure allows me to explore the details of that structure, all forms of relationships, both living and non-living, and the traces within it. Of course, I do this starting from the places I know best, the homes I’ve lived in. Thus, I discover my own traces. With the effects of the changes in my life, I choose to position myself at different points in my relationship with home. Through the flow created by the parallelism between my life and my creations, I look at home from inside, outside, and from the threshold.

“In My Works, Home is a Place Where One Constructs Oneself. A Space of Experience.”

Özge Enginöz: In my works, home is a place where a person constructs themselves. A space of experience. This space is very open to relationships, and within this network of relationships, damage loads its weight onto the person. The potential for the subject to cause and repair damage keeps the home in a continuous process of completion. If we think of home as a place where existence is established in the world, we are constantly rebuilding this home, where we construct our inner world, every day. This reconstruction eventually transforms into a web of relationships through which we experience ourselves. With the damage we take and give in these relationships, I believe that repair can be a harbinger of a new horizon. Our relationship with home here finds its counterpart in the partnership of hope, damage, and repair.

Home is also, in a way, the person’s origin. From there, it connects with its surroundings. When we reach out to the world and receive a blow, it’s the place we return to. However, as reflected in the works of Özge Enginöz, it is not always a safe place. On the other hand, there is the network of relationships within the home. Considering the long pandemic period we went through, what would you like to say about the role of “home” in our lives?

G.M.: On one hand, home establishes the representation of the interior, while on the other, it turns into a structure that hides the chaos of the outside world. As family and forms of relationship change, there is a fine line between the protective interior of the home and the transformation into a chaotic exterior. This is a situation that changes depending on time and geography. The pandemic was a period that made us experience this. Somehow, our positions within the home, the network of relationships inside the house, became a formation that encompassed not just space but also time. Home became a place that sometimes consumed, sometimes healed, and nourished us in the space we created to protect our sensory experiences from the world. I could say that we transformed home in many ways and in many senses, as a way to connect with the world or to protect ourselves from the blows we received from the world. In other words, we discovered the potential for home to change, transform, and expand.

Ö.E.: Since 2018, I’ve been creating a series of works about the concept of damage, and I continue to do so. Particularly during and after the pandemic period, I questioned the concept of damage, home, and how we relate to each other. When we think of home as the place where one constructs themselves, during the pandemic, this process was a time of completion, where a person continuously rebuilt the home they constructed in their inner world, reconsidering family relationships. During this process, we accumulated memories and formed habits, and over time, we started to resemble the home itself. The response of the body to accumulate these things was often shaped by acts of burning, destroying, or breaking.

In the exhibition, in my series “Home Embraces Immobile Childhood,” the combination of crumbling plaster material and found photographs refers to the transformation of our experiences, encouraging us to think about memory, time, repair, and completion. The potential to create that the subject possesses keeps home in a continuous process of completion. Rilke, in describing how past experience shatters space and fragments it, mentions that a fragment can take shape within a specific context and, depending on how different fragments come together, it can assume various meanings. In the exhibition, the fragments coming together on a wall can be considered as the fragments that keep alive the possibility of damage and repair. (*Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. 2016. Istanbul: Can Yayınları.)

According to the conceptual text of the exhibition, referencing Ursula Le Guin, “The concept of reaching for the world expresses a being’s effort to transcend its own limits and connect with its surroundings, achieving unity with the world.” In today’s world, where we prefer to escape from the world and not form real connections with our environment, why are you reaching for the world with your exhibition? Is there a specific outcome you hope to gain from this connection?

“The Book Always Coming Home Reminds Us That a World Without Domination May Be Possible.”

Gamze Öztürk: The concept of “reaching for the world,” which has roots in phenomenology and existential philosophy, also resonates with ecological thinking. Ursula Le Guin’s book Always Coming Home is based on this concept, emphasizing that humans are in constant interaction with the world. The relationship between the Kesh people and the world, as described in the book, is very different from the dynamic relationships we establish today. The book reminds us that a world without domination is possible. This approach, which argues that all living beings are equal, is crucial for understanding the interdependent networks among living beings.

Recent scientific discoveries seem to fundamentally change the way we perceive the connection between humans and the rest of the living world. Biologists have shown that humans are not isolated creatures; they depend on microorganisms to perform vital functions. Ecologists have discovered that trees communicate through invisible mycelium networks in the soil, sending nutrients and medicine to each other. These discoveries decipher the interdependent networks between living beings and fundamentally challenge the idea that humans are superior to nature.

As English philosopher of science John Dupré (2017) expressed, “These findings make it difficult to claim that a living being is self-sufficient, and it is even hard to determine where one living being ends and another begins.” These types of studies investigate thinking with connections rather than the dominant dualistic view of perceiving the world and invite us to see humans as part of all living species. In line with this approach, rethinking the relationship we have with home becomes essential for imagining a new societal structure in which humans relate to the world differently. The exhibition aims to highlight the decisive role of our relationship with home in the possibility of humans reaching for the world.

G.M.: I usually relate our connection to concepts with the moment we first encounter them. The concept of “reaching for the world” was one that immediately surrounded me when I first heard it. In this sense, it’s not only inclusive but also allows for a reading that reverses the anthropocentric view. In the exhibition, the works I’ve created over different periods, all of which are somehow related to my ways of interacting with the world, approach the internal-external opposition from the scale of nature and humanity. These works, both spatially and content-wise, directly reference the concept of reaching for the world. While examining how we relate to the world through home, the exhibition also aims to expand its possibilities and ask how we can relate to the world in different ways.

Ö.E.: “Reaching for the world” for me is related to existing in the world. To exist in the world means to create the possibility of repairing ourselves and our ways of relating to each other through the damage we receive and give in our lives. I would like to share an excerpt from Irmgard Emmelhainz’s “Fragmentation and Healing,” which I believe explains the result I hope to gain from this relationship:

“Through a purifying break from the damaged fragment, we can cleanse our own self and reconnect with the remaining pieces.”

“While thinking about what it would be like to live with our fragmentation and brokenness, a method of repair I once learned comes to mind: If a tool is damaged beyond use, you heat it in a very hot fire to remove the roughness and then dip it in water to get rid of the damaged part. You can drink the water—the story of the damage—and repair it. If you have faith, you can even heal the source of the damage. Afterwards, you can assign a new function or purpose to the damaged part. This method is used to repair metal tools, but drinking the ‘story’ to heal and using the damaged part for a new purpose can also work as a strategy for embracing our brokenness. Through a purifying break from the damaged fragment, we can cleanse our own self and reconnect with the remaining pieces.” (*Irmgard Emmelhainz, Fragmentation and Healing in Gökcisimleri Üzerine, edited by Kevser Güler, Süreyyya Evren, Arter, 2020).

In the exhibition, the poem “To Those Who Lived on Earth in the Valley Homes” from Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home ends with:
“We were always your children.
From the very beginning, we were your children.”

The concept of “child” emerges both metaphorically and literally, when considered with the relationships to the past, future, and home. Family, too, often appears in the images in a child’s memory. None of the members of a broken family are as affected as the child. In your works, the perspective of the child, the approach of reading the world and the home from their eyes, also seems to emerge. What would you like to share about this?

“The Sounds or Scents That Settle in the Rooms of the House, Like Childhood, Also Settle as a Part of the House and Spread Around.”

G.M.: My process of approaching and actually researching the house initially began with the traces in my own memory and the houses. As an artist who has been researching and producing written, visual, and auditory works about the house for almost 15 years, I began to look for the house beyond its architectural aspects. However, when I think about the traces left in my memory, what I brought from my childhood, I see that I never stopped observing and examining the house along with its surroundings. This causes me to explore the possibilities of the house at different times in my personal history. The space around the house where I was born and spent my childhood marks the beginning of everything. The echo of the space I shape on paper, or the sound and silence I place into the space, continues in this way.

Ö.E.: I consider the traumas we experienced in childhood and the house that embraces this childhood as the starting point of the damage. To define the child or our childhood, we must look at the family as a whole and the ways we relate within the family.

“The First Place Where We Receive Damage Starts in the Family.”

I can exemplify this through the works I did on family and damage in the exhibition. In the second room of the exhibition, under the title “The Geometry of the Family,” there is a book made of collages and my three-dimensional works. The damage we first receive starts in the family. In these works, where I explore the nature of the damage caused by inherited traumas from the family in an individual’s emotional state, I am very interested in how literary works, which deeply depict the portraits of family members, guide the “image” created in the mind through writing.

At this point, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse became the starting point for my “Geometry of the Family” works. In this first autobiographical novel, Woolf conveys the tensions of family members from the perspective of a painter, in the form of inner monologues that are rich in auditory impressions. What I am interested in in the book is both the autobiographical closeness I establish with the inner voice and the “shapes” that change according to how the characters are perceived by family members. The space between words and images, as well as the distance between speech and writing, adds dimension to the relationship between monologues and the concept of damage in my works.

In my Geometry of the Family book: Father; imposing, proud, sinking, painful, distant, sometimes unreachable, fluid, breaking and fragile, always superior to the woman, prioritizing male dominance, with sharp and pointed forms; while the mother; feeling insufficient, circling within the same circle, unconscious, the symbol of the circle, nurturing, embracing, caressing, scolding, surrounding, stimulating, in a form close to her essence. The child, on the other hand, is trying to escape this circle, bumping into the angular points of the family members, trying to create their own space inside the rectangle and the circle, while also wanting to escape from it, a new world, a voice, dynamic, changing, bright, transforming, different and special.

I think the most difficult exhibition format is not a personal or group exhibition, but duo exhibitions. Two artists sharing a common language within their own originality. I know that you did not meet before this project, but what kind of processes did you go through to understand each other artistically? How do you evaluate this experience?

G.M.: Yes, I agree with this. Like all exhibitions, duo exhibitions have their challenges. However, what stands out here, unlike other formats, is the relationship between the works. Özge and I found very different points to explore in our views on the house, and we interpreted them in different languages. In this sense, our encounters were exciting. I think not knowing each other beforehand was an advantage. Because the whole process really turned into a discovery. Witnessing each other’s house-studios and living their day and night also became significant. Moreover, Özge, Gamze, and I living in three different cities was sometimes challenging, but the intercity travels we made to visit each other’s studios fed the process.

“What Affected Me Most Was Being in the Same Conceptual Process in Different Techniques.”

Ö.E.: Gözde and I have been thinking about the house and expanding these thoughts for a long time in different times, in different cities. Our way of approaching the house has a long history both spatially and conceptually. What affected me most was being in the same conceptual process in different techniques. I think we met in a space where we allowed ourselves to be free with the house. I believe our fragilities appeared in the exhibition as a calmness that shines from each other’s corners, experienced through the house with Gözde.

The works in the exhibition have a minimal language. The curator of the exhibition, Gamze Öztürk, also supported this style with her approach. Did this harmony happen during the exhibition process, or were there places where you shared common views in your approach to art?

G.M.: Our approach to art and the concept of the house is common to all three of us. We are somehow chasing the minimal, the few, the details, the space behind the door, shrinking, and chasing memory. This made the coming together during the exhibition process easier. The thresholds in the exhibition, like permeable, transparent, and bidirectional transitions, summarize our process. The reason we established non-angular and multiplying dialogues was because we shared similar perspectives. I think all of us knew how to reduce, how to minimize.

Ö.E.: There are many points where we share a common perspective. My coming together with Gamze, her doctoral research on the house, and her architectural perspective formed the framework of our unity. Under this framework, our views on the house with Gözde, from a distant place with our practices, touching the house with familiar tools, emerged. I think our approach to the house, questioning whether it is a place to enter or a place to escape from, intersected with Gamze, and we extended into the world in harmony.

The “Dünyaya Uzanmak” exhibition can be seen at Kasa Gallery until April 11.