‘Archive Works’ by Patrizia Bach in Istanbul

ISTANBUL

German artist Patrizia Bach’s first solo exhibition in Istanbul, titled “Archive Works,” will open on May 12 at DEPO-Istanbul, giving an overview of Bach’s work over the past 10 years.

The artist, whose main medium is drawing, has been working on topics such as archiving, collecting and re-arranging as well as approaching the city as a site of memory, history and storage.

For the past decade, Bach has been focusing on long term projects that include in-depth research processes which result with expansive drawing installations that take over architecture.

Walter Benjamin’s thought-images and his ways of writing have deeply influenced Bach’s work in the recent years.

Her first encounter with this material took place in 2012 at the Walter Benjamin Archive in Berlin. Since then Benjamin’s pictures and thoughts have accompanied her in her art practice. They led her to Paris, where Benjamin himself once tried to rewrite the history of 19th century of France. Afterwards, she followed him to Moscow and retraced the steps of his Moscow Diary, and finally Bach traveled with his notes “On the Concept of History” to Istanbul.

Benjamin’s belief that history is inherent in all present things and pictures and that they are always to be read “in the fight for the oppressed past” did not only change the artist’s personal relation to history but influenced and changed her work immensely – also in retrospect her long-term work on and with amateur photographs, the TOMIKO Archive. In a certain sense, in her practice a complete circle spins from the Archive to Benjamin and from Benjamin back to the Archive.

The exhibition brings together her projects “Arcades-Work,” “TOMIKO Archive” and “Past on each of its Moments be Citable,” an installation of over 400 Drawings, accompanied by the projects’ research material, such as photographs, sketchbooks, maps and artist-books giving the viewer a glimpse of the artist’s journey and process.

Born in 1983 in Munich, Bach lives and works between Berlin and Istanbul. She has received several grants and scholarships in recent years, including the DAAD-scholarship and research-scholarship of Berliner Senate for the project “Past, in Each of its Moments be Citable – an Exhibition Project on Walter Benjamin’s Concept of History in the City of Istanbul,” as well as the Nafög scholarship of Berlin and the grant of Stiftung Kunstfond for her work on Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades-Project.”

Her monograph “Arcades-Work, Drawings on Walter Benjamin” was published in 2017 in German and English language by Revolver-Publishing, Berlin with accompanying texts by Kathrin Busch and Knut Ebeling.

The DEPO-Istanbul exhibition at is supported by the Goethe-Institut, Istanbul and the Walter Benjamin Archive, Berlin.