ATEŞ ALPAR & EDA SÜTUNÇ
Organized in collaboration with BJCEM and ŠKUC Association, the 20th Mediterranea brings together around 90 young artists from the Euro-Mediterranean region. Curated by Tia Čiček and Misal Adnan Yıldız, this edition of the Biennale, subtitled “Our Collective Limits”, will be spread across two cities, Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italy), from May 31 to June 30. The Biennale's context, “UNLIMITED!”, focuses on physical, political and virtual borders. By reflecting on personal and collective stories, narratives, urban and rural, natural and artificial myths, the exhibition explores ways of collective coming together, connecting with our environment and each other.
Sabancı University Kasa Gallery is BJCEM's partner in Turkey with 42 members including cultural institutions, cities and independent organizations from Europe and the Mediterranean. As in every biennial, Sabancı University Kasa Gallery is supporting the artists invited from Turkey for this edition. The works of ATEŞ ALPAR and EDA SÜTUNÇ will be on view at Kasa Gallery between April 30 and May 23 before they go to the biennial.
Ateş Alpar works with a wide range of media including video, performance, sound, photography and site-specific installations, focusing on borders, security tools, cultural destruction and identity fluidity. Participating in the biennial with his 2020 photographs titled “Stone Shell Silent”, the artist reveals the flooding of Hasankeyf and the eco-destruction in the region, creating an example of contemporary eco-art that encompasses social and cultural destruction. The images recorded with photographs document the transformations over time and the organized destruction of nature and culture, pointing to the concepts of time and space, life and death, power and resistance.
Eda Sütunç participates in the biennial with her photography series “Kinship Care Community in New York” dated 2023. Bringing together nurturing collectivities, sensibilities and resourcefulness from a speculative perspective, the ongoing project explores the concept of artificial gestation to restore the dwindling populations of endangered animals due to habitat loss due to climate change. The artist will also give an interactive performance in the exhibition space at Kasa Gallery on May 10th and 17th. The performance titled “A Participatory Ritual on Collective Care and Love” reimagines motherhood not as an individual, biological and exclusively female experience, but as a collective, temporary and inter-ecosystemic structure of care. The performance offers participants a space where they can both leave their individual traces and be part of a collective experience, and is shaped by a structure where visitors can be active carriers, witnesses and producers, not just spectators.
Ateş Alpar works with a wide range of media including video, performance, sound, photography and site-specific installations, centering on issues such as borders, security tools, cultural destruction and identity fluidity. The concepts of archive and memory play a central role in her art practice. Incorporating communal thinking practices into the production process, the artist encourages interaction by publicizing his experiences. Alpar has participated in many national and international exhibitions.
Eda Sütunç received her BA from Koç University and her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a dean's scholarship. Working with performance, sculpture, video and sound, Sütunç creates speculative fictions at the intersection of individual experiences, cultural heritage and ecological transformations. She has participated in residencies at the Banff Center Canada and the School of Visual Arts New York, and her works have been exhibited in Germany, Canada, Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Turkey and the United States.
