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Solo exhibition
Istanbul, Turkey
December 29, 2017 – January 28, 2018
The exhibition contains quasi-archaeological artefacts belonging to a healer and the high priestess of goddess Ishtar named Sitare. This fictional woman supposedly lived during the Bronze Age on the mound of Ash Hill, a trade outpost of the Assyrian city Karum Kanesh located in today’s Kayseri, central Turkey. The tale of Sitare is borne from the pseudo artefacts and personal belongings created by the artist. While the underpinning facts weaving the story alongside the techniques used in re-imagining “ancient” objects are based on modern archaeological knowledge, the script and symbols used in the exhibition are created in fiction.
The Post-Processual Theory in modern archaeology informs the exhibition’s line of enquiry, which proposes to unearth the human agency. Hence, Khaymaz’s primary aim is to connect with Sitare’s individuality, which is undeniably unique to her era. Understanding the nature of knowledge as subjective, and rather than seeing archaeology as a method of scientific data collection and objective generalisation, the artist embraces the political and social situations as well as the free human agency in shaping societies.
Expanding the idea of a re-imagined past, the works in the exhibition draw on the daily life, rituals, and traditions of people who lived in the dawn of settled societies. In preparation for the exhibition, Khaymaz taught themselves to write in cuneiform, a script that initially emerged from Sumer around 3500 B.C., as well as earlier forms of written language, pictograms. While pictograms were used widely by the masses regarding daily matters throughout Mesopotamia, the cuneiform was reserved only for the privileged. In creating a dialogue on clay tablets utilising both systems, Khaymaz points out the discrepancy between the production of knowledge and its distribution in relation to sociopolitical connotations of language.
The artist developed this exhibition in collaboration with philologist and poet Mete Ozel, who will be performing on the preview night to enact the story of Sitare. The exhibition runs from 29 December 2017 to 28 January 2018, with a private view on 28 December. Tasarim Bakkali is a non-profit organisation and an independent art space with an international artist residency programme based in Istanbul, Turkey. Inspired by the “accessible art and accessible design for all” motto, Tasarim Bakkali aims to create a diverse and open platform together with artists and designers who share the same philosophy. For more info, visit: www.tasarimbakkali.cc
Solo exhibition
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
January 12 – March 11, 2017
Our value systems and identities are created at the intersection of humans and things, and that in this regard my practice is related to the notion of ‘thingness’. ‘Things’ encompass space, language, image, and object. Society, as a whole, acts as a disseminating device, helping solidify the reality we create through this interplay and root it in everyday acts. My practice is precisely about exploring the temporal–fleeting–space between the production and solidification of knowledge, and wants to ask “what happens if we throw a spanner in the works?” To that end, I work with cast-out objects which are no longer functioning purposefully, while at the same time, aim to discuss the notion of art-making as a repetitive quotidian practice.
The series of works Idea Generating Machines define art-making as a tactical apparatus; they are created to unpack the sculptural and philosophical possibilities of discarded objects. The repeated gesture of applying plaster and pigment is intended to rid the objects of their practical connotations, to reduce them to their ‘thingness’ in order to redefine and reinterpret them, to form an illusion of mere physical material without a history or a beginning. They are then assemblaged within a state of non-hierarchical totality, overriding the objects’ inherent characters and bestowing upon a rather arbitrary value. Idea Generating Machines revel in this disruptive, transitory phase whereby signs and signifiers of ‘things’ are thrown in disarray.
By the same token, the everyday is a hodgepodge of different experiences and perspectives, a clumsy assemblage of activities, rituals, notions and conceptions: its continuous cycloidal rhythm binds together seemingly non-synchronous existences within its gravitational pull. At the same time, the everyday is an ideological playground where invisible tools of control are in continuous operation. Our daily lives are precariously re-produced and re-performed through every single subjective viewpoint. The performative aspect of the everyday condition allows powerful manifestations of ideology–both historical and modern–to be silently enacted within collective urban spaces in which we experience life through simple daily rituals. Within my creative process, I intend to reveal the covertly oppressive characteristics of the everyday and the linguistic signification which renders such oppression invisible. Throughout this endeavour, I aim to raise a question about hegemonic imaginaries undergirding every aspect of our culture, shaping our critical knowledge of even the most mundane of things.
Photo © Colin Davison
Gesso, plaster, gold enamel paint, household objects