Discovering old traditions with video and performance artwork

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Aslı Çavuşoğlu and Defne Ayas will work together at the 11th edition of Baltic Triennale. Defne Ayas will be curating the triennale with Benjamin Cook.

As a curator, Defne Ayas likes to add her own experiences and her background to the shows that she curates. Currently director of the Witte de With - Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, she will soon curate the 11th Baltic Triennial with Benjamin Cook, Director of LUX in London.

The 11th edition of the Baltic Triennial of International Art is a 12-day event that focuses exclusively on performance and film. Countering the general tendency of biennials to be pluralist, all-encompassing multi-platforms, the curators chose to channel the contributions of artists through a radically minimized vessel – one human being. The Triennial is named after its medium who in his own right carries one of the most common Lithuanian names, Mindaugas.

Ayas is following young and established artists. She is always in the pursuit of discovering more in the art world and she has taken part at Arthub Asia and Performa.

The program of the triennial mainly focuses on performance and video. The performance program is accompanied by Cinema of the Self, a daily eight-hour program of contemporary artists’ films dedicated to notions of selfhood and the construction of the self.

The curators have preferred to present the contributions of the artists through the minimized medium of “a single human being” in opposition to the general tendency of biennials being pluralist platforms.
Danai Anesiadou, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Egle Budvytyte, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Tim Etchels, Goodiepal, Ragnar Kjartansson, Valentinas Klimasauskas with Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Ursula Mayer, Erkka Nissinen, Benjamin Seror, Rimas Sapauskas, Marianne Vitale, Mark Aerial Waller and Claude Wampler will all be participating at the 11th Baltic Triennial.

Ayas said she chose to work with Çavuşoğlu because the Baltic Triennial focused on fictionalized histories and conceptual works.

Çavuşoğlu is an artist concerned with how history can be read with reference to who and what processes enable its writing and toward what end. Most of her work is nourished with experimental narrative practices that evolve out of mechanisms of erasure, repetition, reproduction and narrative interaction. She uses various mediums of books, videos and installations. The first solo exhibition of the artist, who previously took part in certain group exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, was hosted by NON in 2010. She organized a performance entitled “Words Dash Against the Façade” as part of PERFORMA 11, which was also curated by Ayas. Çavuşoğlu, who has been invited to organize a site-specific exhibition at the Frieze Projects London in October 2012 in conjunction with the Frieze London Art Fair, will be the first participant from Turkey to participate in the Frieze Projects. The artists’ second solo exhibition will take place again at NON in fall 2012.

“Çavuşoğlu also has a great interest in film and literature. She also has an ironic and sarcastic way of approaching works,” said Ayas, adding that Çavuşoğlu’s work was unique. Çavuşoğlu's project titled as Incubatio triggered from the practice of 'istihare' -known as incubation in ancient Greece and Rome- a dream experience of person passing the night, after due ritual preparation, in a sacred place in order to receive God’s command and advice. The actor Mindaguas will transform into a channel to receive the answer to Çavuşoğlu's question.