ISTANBUL.- Pera Museum is presenting its new exhibition “The Time Needs Changing”. The exhibition questions our geo-politically controlled notions of time through artists Cao Fei, Nilbar Güreş and Raqs Media Collective, whose works present alternative approaches to linear perception of time, which is strictly enforced by the power structures under which we live. The exhibition is on view 13 December 2018 - 17 March 2019.
Releasing the shackles of time and suggesting alternative and parallel paths, “The Time Needs Changing” exhibition encourages us to appreciate time not just as a measure of our fast-disappearing time on Earth, but as a way of better understanding ourselves. Curated by Alistair Hicks, the exhibition presents a thought-scape that draws from three different parts of the world; China, Turkey and India. Cao Fei, Nilbar Güreş and Raqs Media Collective explore time through drawing, video, photography, installation and new media.
Curator Alistair Hicks underlines that the artists in this exhibition make works about time that help us understand our relationship not only with the outer world but with ourselves. According to Hicks, time is the enemy of the three artists of this exhibition, just as it is the enemy of us all. All the artists respond to time in their own way: Nilbar Güreş questions the straight line of masculine time. In a world where reality and virtual reality have blended, Cao Fei gives us more control of our sense of time. Raqs Media Collective uses time as part of their relentless questioning of the world and the way we should live.
The exhibition catalogue of “The Time Needs Changing” includes essays by Alistair Hicks and Raqs Media Collective. Curator Alistair Hicks mentions that the exhibition design resembles a maze and this maze controls us in a similar way time does: “Normally you are allowed to walk freely in exhibitions, but this one has a partial maze, that controls where your feet walk, but lets you look up at the clocks and see Nilbar Güreş' skirt totem and the other works of art. It is the same with time. Most of us know that it is a man-made system devised to keep us in line, but we can do little else but follow its crazy path. Hopefully the artists offer you a way out.”
As part of the exhibition, a talk by Monica Narula (Raqs Media Collective) and Alistair Hicks will take place on December 14.
Curator, writer and advisor. The author of The Global Art Compass (Thames and Hudson, 2014) and “A Voyage Around our Minds” (The Museum for New Art, Freiburg, 2017). He was the Senior Curator of the Deutsche Bank art collection. He created the Man Booker Library while he was art advisor to Man Group. His previous books include New British Art in the Saatchi Collection, The School of London: The Resurgence of Contemporary Painting and Art Works: British and German Contemporary Art, 1960–2000. He curated the exhibition Doublethink: Doublevision at Pera Museum in 2017.
Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou) is one of the most innovative Chinese young artists to have emerged on the international scene. Currently living in Beijing, she mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today.
Nilbar Güreş (1977, İstanbul) builds her image production on a performative approach and cultural observation. Her work is molded around gender, the composition of conceptual space and narrative presentation, and realized in photography, collage, drawing and video. . Her practice engages with issues surrounding the female identity and the role of women in society, the relationship between women and their home and public space, and the view of Muslim women in Europe. In addition to her gender-based approach, Güreş also explores marginalised communities and patriarchal systems. Güreş’s upcoming group shows in 2019 include Ecology of Darkness (Savy Contemporary, Germany), BODY (Austrian Cultural Forum, Germany) and Still Burning (Varberg Konsthall, Sweden).
Raqs Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi & Shuddhabrata Sengupta) follows its self-declared imperative of ‘kinetic contemplation’ to produce a trajectory that is restless in its forms and methods, yet concise with the infra procedures that it invents. The collective makes contemporary art, edits books, curates exhibitions, and stages situations. It has collaborated with architects, computer programmers, writers, curators, and theatre directors, and has made films. It co-founded Sarai—the inter-disciplinary and incubatory space at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi—in 2001, where it initiated processes that have left deep impact on contemporary culture in India. Raqs Media Collective exhibited their work as part of the show Doublethink Doublevision which took place at Pera Museum in 2017.
