Turkish SALT, London’s Tate Modern collaborate

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

The exhibiton ‘I decided not to save the world,’ featuring works by four artists, will be on display at the Tate Modern Level 2 until Jan. 8, 2012, and will come to SALT Beyoğlu in March next year

Turkish Istanbul’s cultural institution SALT Beyoğlu and London’s Tate Modern are collaborating on a new series of exhibitions for a program initiated by Tate Modern. The first part of the exhibition opened Nov. 4 at Tate Modern, and the second part will open at SALT next year in March
London’s Tate Modern Museum, which organizes a program supporting exhibition and curatorial sharing with institutions from the Middle East, Asia-Pacific countries, South Africa and Eastern Europe, has initiated a new series of exhibitions as part of its program. The museum is collaborating with SALT, a non-profit cultural institution in Istanbul, for the third exhibition of the series organized this month.

The exhibition “I decided not to save the world,” curated by Duygu Demir from the SALT Research and Programs team and Tate Modern Assistant Curator Kyla McDonald, opened on Nov. 4 at the Tate Modern Level 2.

Curious acts and apparently small gestures unite the works in the exhibition, featuring the work of four artists, exploring how they address social concerns through a light-hearted and playful approach.

Artists Mounira Al Solh, Yto Barrada, Mircea Cantor and the collective Slavs and Tatars devise playful interventions into their everyday environment, combining social commentary and investigation with humor or irony to throw off our habits of thinking. Emerging from the specific contexts in which they are working, the light-hearted approach of these works belies the artists’ acute socio-political insights.

Title from a child speaking

The title of the exhibition is taken from Cantor’s 2011 video of the same name in which a single take of a child saying “I decided not to save the world” is shown on a continuous loop. The work is emblematic of the complexity that underlies the simplest of statements and is typical of the way Cantor responds to contemporary concerns using simple and direct gestures.

Yto Barrada, who displays a sculpture called “Palm Sign 2010,” is known for the playful nature of her work, rooted in the specific context of Tangier, Morocco, where she lives and works. Her sculpture, manifesto and film included in this exhibition use humor and satire to address the country’s rapid modernization.

“Rawane’s Song 2006,” an autobiographical video by Al Solh, is a witty take on her struggle to make work about the Lebanese wars in the wake of the previous generation of Beirut artists. Ironically it ends up addressing exactly the issues she claims to be avoiding.

Slavs and Tatars’ practice examines a region they describe as “east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China.” Their text-based works are taken from a variety of sources and play with double-meanings, mistranslation, language barriers and notions of the dichotomy between East and West.

The exhibition will continue until Jan. 8 at the Tate Modern. The second part of the exhibition, which will be enriched with new works, will be organized between March 20 and May 20 at SALT Beyoğlu in Istanbul