Tweet
STORIES OF STRUGGLE: ISTANBUL ARTIST'S NEW EXHIBITION ON 1915 FOLLOWS WOMEN WHO RESISTED
14:00, April 7, 2015
Aret Gıcır's second solo exhibition, Between Fire and Sword, will
run from April 10 to May 9 at the Oktem & Aykut contemporary art
gallery in Istanbul.
Its title inspired by the writer Zabel Yesayan's depiction of the 1909
Cilicia massacres, Between Fire and Sword explores the irreversible
rupture that took place in Anatolia one century ago. The artist
attempts to approach the Catastrophe through the stories of Armenian
women who struggled to protect their children, families, churches,
schools and land by taking up arms and who resisted in order to stay
alive in the period leading to 1915.
In his paintings, Gıcır abstracts once again the already isolated
geography and people by displacing them onto different, estranged
spaces. He also challenges the perpetual reproduction - through
politics, art, literature and cinema - of images of Anatolia that
have depicted it as a lonely, romantic, forlorn or static landscape
since the late years of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of
the Republic. Against recent revived attempts at re-signification,
Gıcır's paintings suggest that such imaginaries of Anatolia did
not correspond to reality in the first place.
The women whose stories and names are barely known except for the few
photographs they have left behind and who are caught Between Fire and
Sword (in Armenian, Unt Hur yev Unt Sur), now stand suspended before
us between, on the one hand, bearing witness, and on the other hand,
the impossibility of witnessing. The paintings ultimately question
whether it is indeed ever possible to depict the Catastrophe within the
limits of the artist's grasp, since, in the words of the novelist Hagop
Oshagan, "The Catastrophe, immensurable yet at the same time peculiarly
uniform, will always elude the artist who tries to penetrate it."
The show will open at 6:30pm on April 9 at the Oktem & Aykut gallery
which is located at Buyuk Hendek Caddesi, Portakal Sokak No:2 34420,
Galata, Istanbul.
Born in Istanbul in 1978, Aret Gıcır graduated from the Department
of Painting of Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. His first
one-person exhibition entitled "Yerevan" was held in Tokatlıyan Han in
2009. He was awarded an artist residence in New York for his project,
The Affliction of the Patriarch by the Moon and Stars Project-SVA in
2013. Gıcır lives and works in Istanbul.
http://hetq.am/eng/news/59481/stories-of-struggle-istanbul-artists-new-exhibition-on-1915-follows-women-who-resisted.html
14:00, April 7, 2015
Aret Gıcır's second solo exhibition, Between Fire and Sword, will
run from April 10 to May 9 at the Oktem & Aykut contemporary art
gallery in Istanbul.
Its title inspired by the writer Zabel Yesayan's depiction of the 1909
Cilicia massacres, Between Fire and Sword explores the irreversible
rupture that took place in Anatolia one century ago. The artist
attempts to approach the Catastrophe through the stories of Armenian
women who struggled to protect their children, families, churches,
schools and land by taking up arms and who resisted in order to stay
alive in the period leading to 1915.
In his paintings, Gıcır abstracts once again the already isolated
geography and people by displacing them onto different, estranged
spaces. He also challenges the perpetual reproduction - through
politics, art, literature and cinema - of images of Anatolia that
have depicted it as a lonely, romantic, forlorn or static landscape
since the late years of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of
the Republic. Against recent revived attempts at re-signification,
Gıcır's paintings suggest that such imaginaries of Anatolia did
not correspond to reality in the first place.
The women whose stories and names are barely known except for the few
photographs they have left behind and who are caught Between Fire and
Sword (in Armenian, Unt Hur yev Unt Sur), now stand suspended before
us between, on the one hand, bearing witness, and on the other hand,
the impossibility of witnessing. The paintings ultimately question
whether it is indeed ever possible to depict the Catastrophe within the
limits of the artist's grasp, since, in the words of the novelist Hagop
Oshagan, "The Catastrophe, immensurable yet at the same time peculiarly
uniform, will always elude the artist who tries to penetrate it."
The show will open at 6:30pm on April 9 at the Oktem & Aykut gallery
which is located at Buyuk Hendek Caddesi, Portakal Sokak No:2 34420,
Galata, Istanbul.
Born in Istanbul in 1978, Aret Gıcır graduated from the Department
of Painting of Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts in 2008. His first
one-person exhibition entitled "Yerevan" was held in Tokatlıyan Han in
2009. He was awarded an artist residence in New York for his project,
The Affliction of the Patriarch by the Moon and Stars Project-SVA in
2013. Gıcır lives and works in Istanbul.
http://hetq.am/eng/news/59481/stories-of-struggle-istanbul-artists-new-exhibition-on-1915-follows-women-who-resisted.html