(cumulative title)
Mountain as a Living Archive group show curated by Nesli Gül, PAKT Foundation, Amsterdam
2025
the right to hold the world
site -specific installation, 17 rolls of grip tape wrapped on a column
I USED TO BE HERE
15-minute spoken-word performance of the text with the same title, written and performed twice for the occassion
In this performance, Yılmaz reflects on her years in The Netherlands and İstanbul through the metaphor of climbing and the absence of mountains. Starting from the chance encounter with a cobblestone engraved I USED TO BE A MOUNTAIN, she unfolds a poetic narrative about migration, belonging, artistic ambition, and the pressures of ascent. Her words weave together personal memory and collective experience, asking what it means to climb, to rest, to fall, and to imagine new landscapes of care and resilience.
(Nesli Gül)






documentation from “I SLIPPED ON MY OWN CRUX”
video installation made in collaboration with Eren Yıldırım


drawings and prints:
white on black, 10,5 x 14,5 cm, oil pastel on paper & black on white, 10,5 x 14,5 cm, oil pastel on paper, 2024
I didn’t speak for a few days, 14,5 x 20,5 cm, pencil on paper, 2024
orange on grey, 10,5 x 14,5 cm, pencil on paper, 2024
and then it was coming, 10,5 x 14,5 cm, oil pastel on paper, 2024
weather forecast, 15 x 32 cm oil pastel on canvas, 2024
tryptic 1, 10 x 14 cm pen on paper, 2023
first child, 10,5 x 14,5 cm, pencil on paper, 2024
tryptic 2, A5, text on paper, 2025
dictionary, A5, text on paper, 2025




Documentation: Hasan Özgür Top


Mountain as a Living Archive, a cross-cultural group exhibition, brings together works by Awoiska van der Molen, Müge Yılmaz, Kevin Bauer and Zeynep Yılmaz. The exhibition repositions the mountain as a potent metaphor and a living repository of geological time, embodied memory and collective transformation.
Mountains have long served as symbols spirituality, power, endurance, and resistance. From early mythological depictions to contemporary interpretations, artists have engaged with mountains to explore their symbolic, material and historical dimensions. This exhibition examines how mountains function as repositories of memory and transformation, but also as spaces for inner journeys and the pursuit of meaning.
Taking inspiration from the act of climbing, as well as the emotional and geological weight of elevation and exposure, the exhibition presents the mountain as a site of personal, communal and historical change. It further engages with the archive as a dynamic structure, interrogating what is preserved and forgotten, and how memory lives within and beyond the landscape. The works by artists articulate a range of perspectives from meditative and ritualistic to conceptual and political, engaging themes of landscape, embodiment and the complex traces left by human intervention.
In a city carved from water and built upon flat, reclaimed land, Mountain as a Living Archive stages an ambitious conceptual elevation, weaving together artistic perspectives into narratives of archive, memory and ecology.
Mountains have long served as symbols spirituality, power, endurance, and resistance. From early mythological depictions to contemporary interpretations, artists have engaged with mountains to explore their symbolic, material and historical dimensions. This exhibition examines how mountains function as repositories of memory and transformation, but also as spaces for inner journeys and the pursuit of meaning.
Taking inspiration from the act of climbing, as well as the emotional and geological weight of elevation and exposure, the exhibition presents the mountain as a site of personal, communal and historical change. It further engages with the archive as a dynamic structure, interrogating what is preserved and forgotten, and how memory lives within and beyond the landscape. The works by artists articulate a range of perspectives from meditative and ritualistic to conceptual and political, engaging themes of landscape, embodiment and the complex traces left by human intervention.
In a city carved from water and built upon flat, reclaimed land, Mountain as a Living Archive stages an ambitious conceptual elevation, weaving together artistic perspectives into narratives of archive, memory and ecology.
Text: Nesli Gül