ART-PRESENTATION: Banu Cennetoğlu
Banu Cennetoğlu deals with the political, social, and media conditions of contemporary information societies. Her conceptual works question the relationship between the private and the public spheres, as well as the difference between unfiltered information on the one hand and edited news on the other. Every day, decisions are made as to what is published when, how, and in what form, what information becomes news, and what social status the private sphere has. Banu Cennetoğlu points out in each of her works that these are political decisions, regardless of whether they concern the private or the public sphere.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Archive
Banu Cennetoğlu’s solo exhibition focuses on two pieces that are central to her recent work: Since 2010, the artist has archived all available local and national daily newspapers published in a specific country on selected days. The six archives created thus far are presented in the first two rooms: The newspapers from Turkey 20/8/2010, from Switzerland dated 14/1/2011, from twenty Arabic-speaking countries dated 2/11/2011, from Cyprus dated 29/6/2012, from the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands dated 4/9/2014, and from Germany dated 11/8/2015. These newspapers may be carefully leafed through and read. In the comparison of the respective archives and the individual newspapers, it is not only possible to observe how the number of daily newspapers differs from country to country, but also how differently and multi-voiced or not multi- events are covered by the press. “A problematic’ triad?: Yellow Red Green” (2015/19) is a site-specific intervention in which, over the last few years, Banu Cennetoğlu has inserted the color combination of yellow, red, and green in the given structures of various exhibition situations and institutional contexts. For K21, she developed a version in which the upper segments of the windows in the central room have been airbrushed in yellow, red and green. The triad thus subtly influences the view outside and changes the color mood inside. It is open to a wide variety of interpretations. However, the work draws on the Turkish state’s systematic ban of this particular color combination in the 1990s, as it includes the colors of the Kurdish flag. In this period, the authorities even considered to change the colors of the traffic lights in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır. The film in the third room is also an archive: “1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 · H O W B E I T · Guilty feet have got no rhythm · Keçiboynuzu · AS IS · MurMur · I measure every grief I meet · Taq u Raq · A piercing Comfort it affords · Stitch · Made in Fall · Yes. But. We had a golden heart. · One day soon I’m gonna tell the moon about the crying game” (2018). As an archive, however, this multi-titled work differs greatly from the newspaper collections in terms of content, ordering, and form of presentation: All photos and videos stored on hard drives, cameras, and cell phones between 10/6/2006 and 21/3/2018 are shown in chronological order. The period begins with two decisive events for the life and work of the artist, namely the pregnancy with her daughter and the beginning of Cennetoğlu’s facilitation of the public circulation of UNITED for Intercultural Action’s List, a growing document that traces information related to the deaths of migrants within or on the borders of Europe since 1993. The film installation brings together the artist’s own photos and videos, as well as visual data from other sources and authors. Images created in connection with exhibition projects or research are presented side-by-side with snapshots from her private life and contrasted with socio-political events in Turkey and abroad, which Cennetoğlu follows critically. The images gradually form an unsparing and intimate portrait of the artist and her socialization over these twelve years as reflected in a succession of political developments with farreaching repercussions. The screening lasts 127 hours, 14 minutes, and 44 seconds or 22 exhibition days.
Info: Curator: Anna Goetz, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K 21, Ständehausstraße 1, Düsseldorf, Duration: 6/7-10/11/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.kunstsammlung.de
