States of Earth

Artists: Rozelin Akgün, Judy Chicago, Berna Dolmacı, Sibel Horada, Ekin Kano, Gözde Mimiko Türkkan, Begüm Mütevellioğlu, Cengiz Tekin, Buşra Tunç, Murat Yıldız, Müge Yılmaz

It has perhaps become more important now than ever before to live on this earth with care, attention, and kindness. Because of this, we need to seek structures that do not feed from oppositions and hierarchy in a world where millions of living beings cohabit. Titled after Birhan Keskin’s poetry book Yeryüzü Halleri (States of Earth), this exhibition brings together 11 contemporary artists whose works revolve around ecology. Featuring research and process-based works along with others which prioritize formal aesthetics, the exhibition compiles various media including painting, performance, photograph, video, stained glass, sculpture, and installation. The artists’ approach, choice of material, and research subjects are based on the relationships built on an equitable imagination with living beings. By exploring how human beings relate to nature through observations around socio-political relationships and everyday structures, the exhibition requests that we think about the impact of sustainability on social justice and a rights-based approach. States of Earth is shaped around the requirement to protect people’s rights over vital resources, the need for colonial critique and the requisites for reorganizing their results. Ecological art revolving around the damage that environmental disasters have caused humans and non-human living beings, cannot be considered separate from political, cultural, and economic conditions. The works that conceptualize the human and nature theme through various artistic methods and attitudes also reveal themselves in this field, along with those that record this damage and urge us to act to change the course of things. 

States of Earth presents proposals for the water, waves, and plants to coexist through the works that highlight the damage that societies, capital, and power cause and the subjectivity of nature in a world that is shaped by capitalist crumbles. Moving away from the post-capitalist perspective’s human-centric approach, it takes on a mushroom, a flower, and a wave of water from a place of equality. 

We are all connected / We are connected with invisible roots / with mycelia like a mushroom or a tree / with the patches that we hide from each other / with things that we protect / with a smoke cloud  / or with what comes from the sea.

Curated by Burcu Çimen and Didem Yazıcı.

Please join for the opening of States of Earth; an exhibition celebrating Yapı Kredi’s 80th anniversary on Thursday, September 5th at 6pm and artist talks on Saturday, September 7th, 2pm - 6pm.