Tip of the Tongue, group show curated by Natálie Kubíková and Mia Milgrom, Garage Gallery Prague
2023
Spoken-word performance based on text “Stones may fall”, approximately 25 minutes. Custom inventory list, found curtain, needles, money detector, poem on paper, graphite on wall, found frame, found framed painting, light switch, light switch frame, sandpaper, lego manual.
Documentation: courtesy of Garage Gallery Prague
Garage Gallery is (was) an independent space designed for the presentation of contemporary art. The project creates a background for contemporary communication between creators and the public and supports various forms of approaches and expressions. The complex consists of gallery spaces, studios represented by contemporary artists and residential studios in Prague’s Karlin.
Having been invited to the performance program, I suggested the gallery to have a self-conducted residency starting from 10 days prior to the opening of the exhibition. When I initially got invited to join “Tip of the Tongue”, my personal agenda in İstanbul was moving houses and dealing with memories in form of objects accumulated throughout almost 23 years. The text “Stones may fall” weaves a narrative around moving: remembering, forgetting, packing, unpacking, boxing, unboxing. The installations scattered in various corners of the large gallery space are positioned as fragments that escaped from the text, materalizing the narrative.
The hand-written texts on the doors and on the high walls of the gallery are translated reproductions of texts I encountered on a morning in İstanbul’s Seyrantepe - an imagery we come across in the performed text. The two frames (one empty and one holding an unidentifiable image) are surplus that did not make it to the newly moved-in place but that were everyday familiar objects existing in the old flat. The light switch button is installed next to the one at the entrance of the gallery, but with no electrical connection to a real circuit, next to a socket frame that acts like a frame for a drawing. Pages from a lego manual that demonstrate how to build a simple home out of legos wereinstalled together with sheets of sandpaper. The tulle curtain made its way from my late grandmother’s flat, with pinned scrap paper pieces from the lego manual. The fictional inventory list lists various objects with a location indicator, pretending to be used by a logistics company called “Mountain Heights” - and does so through infromal, personal descriptions of objects rather than their formally identifiable qualities. The money detector with a poem underneath is installed in the bar section of the gallery, where UV light would be most visible due to lack of light.
Having been invited to the performance program, I suggested the gallery to have a self-conducted residency starting from 10 days prior to the opening of the exhibition. When I initially got invited to join “Tip of the Tongue”, my personal agenda in İstanbul was moving houses and dealing with memories in form of objects accumulated throughout almost 23 years. The text “Stones may fall” weaves a narrative around moving: remembering, forgetting, packing, unpacking, boxing, unboxing. The installations scattered in various corners of the large gallery space are positioned as fragments that escaped from the text, materalizing the narrative.
The hand-written texts on the doors and on the high walls of the gallery are translated reproductions of texts I encountered on a morning in İstanbul’s Seyrantepe - an imagery we come across in the performed text. The two frames (one empty and one holding an unidentifiable image) are surplus that did not make it to the newly moved-in place but that were everyday familiar objects existing in the old flat. The light switch button is installed next to the one at the entrance of the gallery, but with no electrical connection to a real circuit, next to a socket frame that acts like a frame for a drawing. Pages from a lego manual that demonstrate how to build a simple home out of legos wereinstalled together with sheets of sandpaper. The tulle curtain made its way from my late grandmother’s flat, with pinned scrap paper pieces from the lego manual. The fictional inventory list lists various objects with a location indicator, pretending to be used by a logistics company called “Mountain Heights” - and does so through infromal, personal descriptions of objects rather than their formally identifiable qualities. The money detector with a poem underneath is installed in the bar section of the gallery, where UV light would be most visible due to lack of light.