exhibition

Kutlug Ataman. Mesopotamian Dramaturgies

 


WORKS ON DISPLAY / SELECTION

Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Dome, 2009
Video installation, variable dimensions, 14’ 40”

Dome is a large-scale ceiling projection referencing the painted ceilings of Catholic churches. Suspended in the sky like modern-day angels, winking young provincial Turks in their everyday clothes exhibit cell phones and other symbols of progress.

Kutlug Ataman, Column e Dome, 2009
View of the installation
Photo: Simone Cecchetti, 2010
Kutlug Ataman, Dome, 2009
Still video
Courtesy: the artist

 

Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Column, 2009
Video installation, variable dimensions 

Inspired by Trajan’s Column in Rome, Column is a work composed of old televisions installed in an ascending spiral alluding to the reliefs following one another on the Roman monument to the imperial victories in Dacia.

However, rather than the victors, Column speaks of the defeated as represented by the citizens of the most remote area of Turkey looking mutely towards the video camera, unable to make their voices heard, to express their stories.

View of the installation
Photo: Simone Cecchetti, 2010

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Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / English As A Second Language, 2009
Dual channel video installation, variable dimensions, 54’ 48” (left) 59’ 10” (right)
English as a Second Language refers to the use of English as the lingua franca of modernity that rather than increasing the possibilities of reciprocal comprehension, frequently leads to a loss of the sense of communication.

In the video, two young Turks read aloud without understanding the nonsense verses of the English poet Edward Lear. The incomprehensibility of the text, difficult to interpret even for a mother tongue English speaker, renders the illusory universality of globalization even more evident.

Kutlug Ataman, Still video
from English as a Second Language, 2009
Courtesy the artist
View of the installation
Photo: Simone Cecchetti, 2010

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Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Strange Space, 2009
Video projection in wooden box, 150 x 400 x 258 cm, 20’ 15’’ 

Strange Space is the recording of a performance in which the artist crosses a vast and desolate desert plain barefoot and blindfolded Inspired by Layla and Majnun.

A legend known throughout the Islamic world in which the hero, blinded by love, wanders through the desert in search of his beloved, the work uses the ancient narrative theme as a metaphor for the unresolved relationship between the “archaic” and “modern” worlds, of their reciprocal attraction and the trauma caused by the meeting.

Kutlug Ataman
Still video from Strange Space, 2009
Courtesy the artist