The exhibition “coming closer to the world” draws inspiration from the intricate relationship between humans and the world. The concept of coming closer to the world signifies an entity transcending its boundaries to connect with its surroundings and achieve unity with the world. By exploring the possibilities of this network of relations through the lens of the home, the exhibition invites viewers to delve into the dialogue that unfolds between Özge Enginöz and Gözde Mulla within this framework.
The narrative of the exhibition, curated by Gamze Öztürk is shaped around the spatial configuration of Kasa Gallery. In the interconnected rooms, a trajectory is presented reflecting on the creation of the home, its ongoing formation, its incomplete nature, and, finally, what remains from all these acts.
CORRIDOR
“The house is always first understood as the most primitive drawing of a line that produces an inside opposed to an outside, a line that acts as a mechanism of domestication.”
Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt
Gözde Mulla’s fabric installation in the corridor depicts a mountain and sky scene. Somewhere Outside (2025) appears at the beginning of the exhibition route and reappear at its conclusion, momentarily dissolving the boundary between inside and outside—an essential distinction for the creation of home.
ROOM 1
“The beginning of association among human beings, their meeting and living together, thus came into being because of the discovery of fire. When many people came into a single place, having, beyond all the other animals, this gift of nature: that they walked, not prone, but upright, they therefore could look upon the magnificence of the universe and the stars. For the same reason they were able to manipulate whatever object they wished, using their hands and other limbs.”
Marcus Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture
In Ten Books on Architecture, through a mythological narrative, Vitruvius links the emergence of the first shelter to the discovery of fire. This initial section of the exhibition, featuring works that engage with the concept of fire, marks the moment a home comes into being. Özge Enginöz collects tinder conks —known as "fire carriers"— fungi that consume the trees they inhabit. Her installation Fire Bearers (2022), composed of tinder conks transformed into sculptural forms, is displayed alongside a painting from Gözde Mulla’s series Somewhere Inside (2021). Bearing witness to the devastation brought by forest fires in Turkey, this series records the destruction humans impose on the planet. Enginöz’s work Asleep (2024), a house-shaped moneybox emitting light, symbolizes the presence of life within a space. In dialogue with this three-dimensional piece, Mulla’s Night Series: Low Volume (2020) presents the image of a distant light.
ROOM 2
“Meanwhile dismal sheets of dust constantly invade earthly habitations and uniformly defile them: as if it were a matter of making ready attics and old rooms for the imminent occupation of the obsessions, phantoms, spectres that the decayed odour of old dust nourishes and intoxicates.”
George Bataille, Encyclopmdia Acephalica
This section explores everyday interactions with the home and the factors that shape them, deepened by the dialogue between the artists. In her series The House Embraces the Motionless Childhood (2022), Özge Enginöz brings together various materials on canvas, covering them with plaster—a substance that gradually crumbles over time. Through processes of burning, decay, destruction, and becoming ash, Enginöz questions how we relate to the world and to one another. This series reflects the ongoing formation of the home and its incomplete nature. Gözde Mulla’s works Where Is My Pillow? (2017), and Where Am I? (2017) draw attention to overlooked areas within the home, reflecting on the potentialities of the home as a space. Additionally, in two paintings from her Somewhere Inside (2021–2022) series, Mulla expands the sensory dimension of the home by depicting fire—used as a metaphor for violence—hidden in the secluded corners of rooms. Enginöz draws inspiration from the inner voices of family members in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, translating them into three-dimensional forms in which each member assumes a unique geometry. The Geometry of Family (2022) brings together family members, reflecting on how they shape everyday interactions with the home—whether as constructive or destructive forces.
ROOM 3
“After twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways, we would recapture the reflexes of the “first stairway,” we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house’s entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch has remained in our hands.”
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
In the third room, which traces the imprints of both the individual on the space and the space on the individual, Özge Enginöz examines the notion of home in her series Disappearing Over Time (2022), challenging conventional meanings of objects. Gözde Mulla explores the spatial memory and the reflections of political, social, and cultural phenomena within it, approaching these through the concepts of void and threshold. In her series Space Experiences Series: Between, There, Here, Now (2025), depicting two figures at a doorway, she constructs a narrative that interrogates the concept of threshold both spatially and conceptually. Finally, in her installation What I Remember Is Only Silence (2025), composed of electrical switches, Mulla stages a scene of welcome and farewell, evoking the subtle yet profound rituals embedded in everyday spatial interactions.
*The title of the exhibition comes from Ursula Le Guin's book Always Coming Home, envisioning a form of social organisation in which human beings relate to the world in a different way. The exhibition title, drawn from the poem “From the People of the Houses of Earth in the Valley to the Other People Who Were on Earth Before Them” in the referenced book, invites new possibilities for exploring the exhibition’s themes.
Special Thanks
Ahmet Hasoğlu, Alp Enuysal, Aşkın Bircan, Aylin Öztemir, Baran Ertürk, Bart Callebaut, Bengisu Çağlayan, Ceren Hamiloğlu, Derya Yücel, Dora Gedik, Duygu Şengünler, Erdem Akter, Erol Aktaş, Esra Birbir, Ezgi Yılmaz, Fatih Yılmaz, Fikret Şahin, Fulya Sade, Gizem Aykut, Hazal Birincioğlu, Hüseyin Turan, İlayda Pöge, Kaan Öztemir, Kevser Güler, Kubilay Ercelep, Leyla Bayrı, Melis Tuduk, Melodi Gülbaba, Mislina Burhan, Muammer Temel, Mustafa Kağan Ünal, Neslinur Akgün, Nilüfer Erden, Ozan Akgün, Pelin Kuş, Sera Sade, Sercan Dericioğlu, Serhat Öztemir, Şadiye Öztürk, Şerif Kocaman, Ulaş Bölük, Uluç Kutal, Umut Özel, Ümit Mesci, Yağmur Akgün, Yaşar Öztürk, Yunus Ülker, Zeynep Seyhun.
Illustration + Graphic Design
Tan Nuhoğlu
Photos
©Fatih Yılmaz
Supporters
Jotun Türkiye
Massive Technics
Same as Before
