Andrea Knezović & Yeşim Akdeniz
Curated by Àngels Miralda
Initiated in Amsterdam in October 2025, the exhibition’s first iteration connected closely with the environment of migration, bureaucracy, and general elections within a European context. Through the sculptural assemblages of Yeşim Akdeniz balancing labour and migration, and the direct fixations on the psychogeography of social interaction in the work of Andrea Knezović, the exhibition questioned the conditions for the creation of culture under constant surveillance. At the ballot-box, filled in papers decided the future of voiceless non-citizens, their ability to make a living, and the right to remain. The exhibition positions the identity of an outsider as a durational performance that has to do with making a living wage under time constraints embedded with social and political prejudices and limitations. While institutions tend to exploit these conditions for their own narrative, this exhibition proposed a deeper look into the matter through direct and abstract reflection.
In the second part of this exhibition, the two artists rework these themes in a follow-up exhibition in Kasa Galeri’s bank vault, creating an even closer metaphor between time, money, and power. The works of Andrea Knezović and Yeşim Akdeniz both refer to language while resulting in very different artistic forms. Akdeniz’s sculptural and wall-based assemblages often refer to popular refrains, folk wisdom, and the collective experience of migration through tongue-in-cheek conceptual compositions that mix abstract references with the ungraspable familiarity of the uncanny. A new series of wall-based sculptural works reference manual labour, bodily dimensions, and the texture of material and technological realms. They allude heavily to the role of gendered labour within the complex matrix of social belonging.
Meanwhile, Knezović’s hand-written and vinyl-cut phrases pose sociological questions about time, value, and labour in spatial circuits that result in individual psychogeographies of artistic space. This iteration of the work has been made in consultation with artist Irem Günaydin in order to create a direct local anchor with the lived experience of the city. This direct use of language triggers solitary or social dialogue. The metal kinetic installation In Our Times (2025) keeps a record of time spent. This piece physically transforms Kasa into a giant metronome as it clicks back and forth, raising awareness of the layered chronopolitics that we persistently inhabit.
We are grateful for the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Dutch Embassy in Türkiye that made this exhibition possible.
Credits:
Coordination: Derya Yücel
Graphic Design: Marit van der Gevel
Technical Master Work: Studio Otakar Zwartjes
Translation Consultant for As Above So Below: İrem Günaydin
Initiation: Doris Benhalegua Beri
Yeşim Akdeniz was a resident at De Ateliers in Amsterdam in 2002 until 2004 and won the Kunstverein Bonn/Peter Mertes Stipendium in 2005. She has exhibited her work at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunstverein Frankfurt; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; and Kunstverein Bielefeld among many others. Yeşim Akdeniz’s practice is marked by symbolic narratives that reflect cultural production, negotiation, and identity formation. Through a distinct visual language, she explores the migration of forms, materials, and labor, weaving personal and cultural references into layered readings of history, identity, and collective memory.The artist currently lives and works between Brussels and Düsseldorf.
Andrea Knezović is a visual artist, researcher, and writer based in Amsterdam. She holds a Research Master’s from the University of Amsterdam (2019) and a Bachelor of Honours from the Academy of Visual Arts, Ljubljana (2015). Knezovićs’ work integrates various tactics of how psycho-cultural politics shape bodies, language, and systems of care. She is a co-author of Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest (Onomatopee, 2025), and her writing has appeared in Thresholds Journal (MIT Press), Set Margins Publishing (Eindhoven), and Simulacrum (University of Amsterdam). Knezović received the BAK Fellowship and residency for Situated Practice at BAK-basis voor actuele kunst. Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including MUZA Museum (2025), P/////AKT Foundation (2025), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Ljubljana (2024), Croatian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024 - invited by Vlatka Horvat), Cukrarna (2023), Keller Gallery at MIT (2022), Kiribati National Museum (2019), and Nieuw Dakota (2019) among others. She co-founded MARC Amsterdam (2020–2023) and was Chair of the Board of Salwa Foundation (2022–2024).
Àngels Miralda is an independent writer and curator living in Amsterdam and Valencia. Her recent exhibitions include the Contemporary Biennial TEA (Tenerife), Something Else III & IV (Cairo Off-Biennale); Opbo Studios (Athens); SKUC Gallery (Ljubljana), Taca (Palma de Mallorca), MAAC (Guayaquil); Garage Art Space (Nicosia); Radius CCA (Delft), PAKT Foundation (Amsterdam), Tallinn Art Hall (Estonia), MGLC – International Centre for Graphic Arts (Ljubljana), Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic (Municipal Gallery of Zagreb), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chile (Santiago), Museu de Angra do Heroísmo (Terceira – Azores), and the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (Riga) among many others. Miralda wrote for Artforum from 2019-2023 and served as Editor-in-Chief at Collecteurs from 2021-2025 where she co-curated three chapters of the digital exhibition FALASTIN among other editorial duties. She has published texts in monographs and catalogues published by Phaidon Press, TBA21, and Cukrarna among others. Recently, she has written articles such as “Who Killed the Independent Curator?” for Frieze Magazine as well as reviews for E-Flux Criticism.
