AMBIVALENT MASS
type: spatial installation
exhibited at Huiden Club
Migrating from one sociopolitical context to another is a liminal way of experiencing life. The migrated bodies who are exposed to being externally appropriated reclaim their own space and create a spatial dimension in their own domestic spaces.
While the domestic space is full of traces of heritage, the windows that separate the domestic and the outside become somewhat like a display for the dweller. The fragments of their identities can be found between the glass and the curtain.
Self-expression through symbolism and motifs has a long history that goes back centuries. Culturally, thoughts, feelings, and aspirations have been expressed through symbols and motifs on various canvases.
Being a person who has been using tattoos as a way of self-expression and migrated from Turkey to the Netherlands, I’ve been spectating the unique statements taking place in these window spaces myself. Through these portals opening to the identities of the migrated bodies, I find myself reenacting the same. Standing at the intersection of these two grounds of self-expression led me to allude to 'the body and the space becoming one' through the overlapping ideas in this artwork.
The installation is born out of dualities. It aims to put an emphasis on the interplay of the appropriation, and the idea of one’s self. The prominent motifs from the cultural heritage that I was born into and the replication of my own tattoos are embroidered on the latex canvas which stands as a metaphor for both the curtain and human skin. A collective concept of inherited identity clashes with a concept of individual identity finding its own ambivalent language.