HANOVER.- The exhibition Social Fabric by the Berlin-based artist Nevin Aladağ (*1972 in Van, Turkey) marks the second round of an experimental format: topics such as diversity in society, identity, and community, which already played a role in the first part, are now being negotiated on an abstract level. The show features four textile works from a current series of the same name as well as the two video works Top View (2012) and City Language I (2009). New photographs from the series Best Friends (2018), which were taken in the summer in Hanover, also are being shown.

While in the first part current social questions on the subject of the individual were negotiated in photography and video, the second part of the exhibition focuses on different cultures as a whole. Crafts in the form of carpets and musical sounds can be understood as expressions or stand-ins for culture.

In the series Social Fabric , Aladağ collages various textiles, from knotted kilims to carpets made of wool, silk, and sisal. Their manufacturing processes and origins range from traditional knotted rugs from India, Iran, and Turkey to commercialized oriental carpets as well as industrially manufactured commodities from the globalized carpet industry. Without overlapping, the individual parts are juxtaposed and make up a “social fabric.”

Public spaces often serve as the setting for the films, photographs, installations, sculptures, and performances of Nevin Aladağ, whose work was presented to a wide audience at documenta 14. Here the tension between community and individuality becomes particularly evident and is expressed in the sound of the city. In the video work Top View , the various rhythms of feet on paving stones and streets in Munich create a common sound that becomes a portrait of the diverse public urban space. In City Language I , the urban space in Istanbul creates new sounds with musical instruments. Instead of the breath or a playing hand, music is created by the movement of the musical instruments through the city—for instance, a flute held out of a moving car, claves rolling down a street, or pigeons that pluck the strings of a bağlama (a Turkish lute) covered with seeds.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog published by Kettler Verlag containing postcards with works from the exhibitions Part 1: Best Friends and Part 2: Social Fabric. It also features new photographs taken in Hanover in August 2018.

Nevin Aladağ was born in 1972 in Van, Turkey. She studied sculpture from 1993 to 2000 under Olaf Metzel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Aladağ has lived and worked in Berlin since 2002. In 2018 the artist won the Ernst Rietschel Prize for sculpture. She participated in documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), the Sharjah Biennial (2013), and the 11th Istanbul Biennial (2009), among others.

Her works have been shown around the world in numerous solo and group exhibitions at venues including the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn (2018), the Kunsthalle Hamburg (2016/17), the Kunstmuseum Linz (2016/17), the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2016), Marta Herford (2016), the Kunsthalle Basel (2014/15), the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2014), Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt (2012), the Haus der Kunst in Munich (2011), the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2011), Hayward Gallery in London (2010), the Kunsthaus Zürich (2008), and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City (2006).

Works by Nevin Aladağ are represented in international collections, including the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the Federal Republic of Germany’s Contemporary Art Collection in Bonn, the Museum Tinguely in Basel, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna, and the K11 Art Foundation in Shanghai and Hong Kong.The exhibition is supported by the Förderkreis der Kestner Gesellschaft.

Curator: Christina Végh

Assistant Curator: Julika Bosch