ROTTERDAM.- TENT and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen jointly present The Back Room, a four-part solo exhibition of underexposed yet iconic Rotterdam artists. Curator Noor Mertens, presents work by an older generation of artists in the context of TENT’s current programme. This autumn, the work of artist Esma Yiğitoğlu is central in TENT, and this is also the final edition of this collaboration.

The artist Esma Yiğitoğlu (Zincidere, 1944 - Rotterdam 2009), born and raised in a liberal, intellectual environment in Turkey, left for Rotterdam at the age of seventeen to study at the Academy of Visual Arts, later called the Willem de Kooning Academy. Yiğitoğlu was active in Rotterdam as a visual artist until her death in 2009. Besides her artistry, she dedicated herself to a better social position of Dutch people with a Turkish background.

Yiğitoğlu’s oeuvre consists of sculptures, drawings and paintings. The effects of language, as a sign system which can both exclude and attract people, form a major part in her work. The sculptures she has made, starting from the early nineties, have stylized, organic shapes which she created using natural materials such as paper pulp, loam and terracotta. Although her work is primarily abstract, Yiğitoğlu’s sculptures often refer to archaic figures and architecture; they are related to Turkish amulets, Islamic graves and Egyptian sarcophaguses. With her work she explores the boundaries between the material world and an immaterial, spiritual world.

Yiğitoğlu found herself at the beginning of a development of which the consequences have only recently become obvious. The period in which she worked was a time of cultural shifts, both in the world of art and in the Netherlands in general. Due to globalization and migration, a richly varied multicultural society came into being. Meanwhile, ‘global art’ was created, in which universal themes and local traditions very often crossed each other’s path, and cultural positions started to mix with each other.

Turkish cultural centre for Women
Esma Yiğitoğlu played a crucial role for the emancipation of Turkish women in the Rijnmond area by founding a Turkish cultural centre for women. She combated the illiteracy of Turkish women, so that it would be much easier for them to function in Dutch society. For municipal institutions, she organized various exhibitions about the Turkish culture. On the one hand, the ‘foreign workers’, as they were called in those days, were given a face, and on the other hand the group was stimulated to obtain a place in Dutch society while retaining their own identity.

The Back Room
The Back Room examines the position occupied by both institutions – one as an established museum, and the other as a young exhibition space without a collection – at local and national level. Through this collaboration, TENT and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen reveal the subjective process of being included in or excluded from the art canon. The artists presented in The Back Room are partly collected by museums. However, despite their work not always receiving the attention it deserved, it is now considered important for several reasons. They are artists whose materials and strategies return in the work of today’s younger generation of artists. Therefore, The Back Room raises questions about the role and position of the artist: how does the artist build a reputation and what factors influence their success? The Back Room at TENT runs concurrently with Project Rotterdam at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which focuses on a younger generation of artists not yet known as institutional figures.

Previously, The Back Room showed work of Paul Beckman, Charly van Rest and Arie de Groot (on view until 18 September). From 6 October until 4 December the works of artist Esma Yiğitoğlu will be highlighted.