DUSSELDORF.- The Istanbul-based artist Banu Cennetoğlu deals with the political, social, and media conditions of contemporary information societies. Her conceptual works question the relationship between the private and the public spheres, as well as the difference between unfiltered information on the one hand and edited news on the other. Every day, decisions are made as to what is published when, how, and in what form, what information becomes news, and what social status the private sphere has. Banu Cennetoğlu points out in each of her works that these are political decisions, regardless of whether they concern the private or the public sphere.
The exhibition focuses on two pieces that are central to her recent work: Since 2010, the artist has archived all available local and national daily newspapers published in a specific country on selected days. The six archives created thus far are presented in the first two rooms: The newspapers from Turkey dated August 20, 2010, from Switzerland dated January 14, 2011, from twenty Arabic-speaking countries dated November 2, 2011, from Cyprus dated June 29, 2012, from the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands dated September 4, 2014, and from Germany dated August 11, 2015. These newspapers may be carefully leafed through and read. In the comparison of the respective archives and the individual newspapers, it is not only possible to observe how the number of daily newspapers differs from country to country, but also how differently and multi-voiced — or not multi-voiced — events are covered by the press.
The film in the third room is also an archive: “1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 · H O W B E I T · Guilty feet have got no rhythm · Keçiboynuzu · AS IS · MurMur · I measure every grief I meet · Taq u Raq · A piercing Comfort it affords · Stitch · Made in Fall · Yes. But. We had a golden heart. · One day soon I'm gonna tell the moon about the crying game” (2018). As an archive, however, this multi-titled work differs greatly from the newspaper collections in terms of content, ordering, and form of presentation: All photos and videos stored on hard drives, cameras, and cell phones between June 10, 2006 and March 21, 2018 are shown in chronological order. The period begins with two decisive events for the life and work of the artist, namely the pregnancy with her daughter and the beginning of Cennetoğlu’s facilitation of the public circulation of UNITED for Intercultural Action’s List — a growing document that traces information related to the deaths of migrants within or on the borders of Europe since 1993.
The film installation brings together the artist’s own photos and videos, as well as visual data from other sources and authors. Images created in connection with exhibition projects or research are presented side-by-side with snapshots from her private life and contrasted with socio-political events in Turkey and abroad, which Cennetoğlu follows critically. The images gradually form an unsparing and intimate portrait of the artist and her socialization over these twelve years as reflected in a succession of political developments with farreaching repercussions. The screening lasts 127 hours, fourteen minutes, and forty-four seconds or 22 exhibition days.
While these two proliferate collections testify to the impossibility of completeness, the two interventions in the middle space that are related to the institutional architecture pose the question of the subjective and psychological conditions of information processing: Twentythree mylar balloons form the phrase “Ich weiss zwar, aber dennoch” (“I know very well but nevertheless”). It refers to the psychological phenomenon of denial as formulated by the French psychoanalyst and ethnologist Octave Mannoni after Sigmund Freud. The sentence “Je sais bien, mais quand même” describes the conscious disavowal of facts of which we are aware, but which do not form the basis of our actions. The sentence is directly linked to the newspaper project, which reveals how comprehensively people are informed in individual countries, as well as to Cennetoğlu’s own working situation between the political and the private spheres. When, over the course of the exhibition, the balloons lose helium, the chain of letters falls apart. The sentence dissipates and thus negates itself.
“‘A problematic’ triad?: Yellow Red Green” (2015/19) is a site-specific intervention in which, over the last few years, Banu Cennetoğlu has inserted the color combination of yellow, red, and green in the given structures of various exhibition situations and institutional contexts. For K21, she developed a version in which the upper segments of the windows in the central room have been airbrushed in yellow, red and green. The triad thus subtly influences the view outside and changes the color mood inside. It is open to a wide variety of interpretations. However, the work draws on the Turkish state’s systematic ban of this particular color combination in the 1990s, as it includes the colors of the Kurdish flag. In this period, the authorities even considered to change the colors of the traffic lights in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır.
Banu Cennetoğlu was born in Ankara in 1970. She lives and works in Istanbul. Selected solo exhibitions: SculptureCenter, New York (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2015); Kunsthalle Basel (2011). Selected group exhibitions: Liverpool Biennial (2018); documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); 10th Gwangju Biennial (2014); Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010); 53rd Venice Biennial / Turkish Pavilion (2009).
The film installation “1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 ...” (2018), with a total length of 127 hours, fourteen minutes, and forty-four seconds, is shown over twenty-two days, daily from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.
Guest Curator: Anna Goetz
