https://sanatorium.com.tr/exhibitions/107-as-the-land-falls-apart/installation_shots

As the Land Falls Apart

7 March – 3 May 2025

SANATORIUM presents Didem Erbaş’s solo exhibition “As the Land Falls Apart” from March 7 to May 3, 2025. “As the Land Falls Apart” examines the processes of existence and extinction of living species through spatial constructions, employing a multilayered perspective across various materials and media.

The installation at the center of the exhibition is composed of elements made from various materials such as plastic bottles, epoxy, phosphorescent pigment, latex, lead, metal, and ceramics. These elements are positioned on a gridded structure and aluminum pedestals, offering a cross-section of both the earth’s surface and the underground. This labyrinth-like system references Das Kriegspiel, an 18th-century strategic war game, highlighting themes of spatial mobility and displacement. The presentation of hidden objects and videos within the installation evokes a zoological or archaeological museum. The grid structure mimics the “target” symbol seen in the video works within the installation. The aerial, drone-like gaze silently observing from above alludes to surveillance and control mechanisms.

Other works throughout the exhibition reference the underground and biological processes. These objects evoke laboratory-grown microorganisms and underground pipelines. The artist’s photograms—created by exposing objects such as dead insects, charging cables, and snail shells to sunlight and chemical dyes—result from her research at The Warburg Institute in London and her studies on invertebrate fossils in Turkey. The neon pigments on the drawings become visible under UV light, referencing target-tracking systems used in military surveillance technologies.

A video projected onto the wall features a text read by Helen Brecht, accompanied by various visuals. The black-and-white SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) images reveal the microstructures of different objects and materials, interwoven with anonymous war footage and videos that investigate the survival strategies of living beings. These sharp juxtapositions of violence, surveillance, and the struggle for survival create an organic link between the video and the installation.

Drawing from Didem Erbaş’s material and archive-based practice, As the Land Falls Apart presents the artist’s research about nature and technology, biology and surveillance, memory and extinction through a multilayered installation.

Programme Organization: Didem Erbas 

5533 November – December Event Program

How do non-human beings live in the post-human context? What are the relationships among non-human beings and inanimate objects?

While pursuing this line of research, the following questions came up: “How do humans see? Are the perspectives we see and look through the same? What kinds of perspectives do we have? What is the difference between human and animal vision? Do inanimate objects have perspectives? Who owns the vision/gaze of unmanned aerial vehicles or machines? What is scale? How does a scale shrink or grow? What is an unnatural image? What will the image of the future look like? Could we make predictions based on green lights, neon lights, thermal camera images, computer game images, drone images, images from a machine or through an animal’s perspective? What will the post-human landscape look like? Is a world without humans possible?

The goal of this research is to discuss the main issues of optics and perspective, starting from the concept of posthuman. Is it possible to reconsider the issue of perspective and the gaze by expanding the limits of the observable scale with the perspective of the animate and inanimate? The examination of the landscape and material observed with new techniques reveals the relationships between war and art. Could it be determined by questioning the purposes of use of observation techniques and materials and how the art material gains or loses value? This project, which sets out from these questions, aims to be an adventure of a research process on posthuman, perspective, non-human and inanimate beings.

Exhibition Concept

I encountered 5533 through in 2013 through Merve Ünsal’s invitation. I then met Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan, as I followed all the events that took place at 5533. When I came to Istanbul after an extended residency stay, I went to Nancy with the idea to organize events at 5533. I will have the opportunity to spend time at 5533 11 years after that first encounter. 

In 2017, again upon Merve’s invitation, I participated in the project called You&I, which Merve and Nancy co-facilitated. This program, which I designed based on the idea of You&I, will end with the idea and production process of You&I&It. You&I is “A spatial experiment made with existing and potentially existing works, which could only take place in 5533.” In addition, I wanted to add an “It” where we can make room for the non-humans. You&I&It will open on Saturday, December 21st at 5533 with the works of the artists I collaborate with.

This program will be open to presentations, performances, and workshops, inspired by the idea of my research project “Artificial Landscapes and the Politics of the Material in the Context of the Posthuman Gaze”. The program will start in November with online presentations, and then continue with presentations and workshop events at 5533.

Special thanks to Merve Ünsal for the translation of the text and Eren Sulamacı for the poster designs.

The result that will take place in the Cité des Arts Turkey Workshop has been announced. With the artist residency program that İKSV has been running since 2009, the end of those working in different disciplines have the opportunity to live and work in Paris on a quarterly basis.

This year, Eda Aslan will participate in the program in January-March, Fatma Belkıs in April-June, Didem Erbaş in July-September, and Kadir Kayserilioğlu in October-December.

https://www.iksv.org/en/participants/didem-erbas

Alternative Art School 17.08.2022

“A kaleidoscope of gestures, visions, personal memories and abstract flourishes adorns this virtual gallery in this first ever group show of artists attending The Alternative Art School. As diverse as the experiences of this online community, this exhibition is an opportunity for our community to look across this digital space and see what each has been working on. Yes, as ever, the digital perhaps could be described as a facsimile of the real, but after two years of being in existence, the school has come to realize that this interpersonal exchange is merely one version of many forms of human connection and exchange.

This exhibition was organized by Danielle Schlunegger who has been an incredibly valuable and steadfast member of The Alternative Art School community. Like many at the school, her road to this exhibition has been syncopated by life concerns amidst a pandemic that seems to drag on with its emotional and pragmatic toll. If anything, the pandemic has brought the world briefly under one umbrella and this exhibition, regardless of form, is also an expression of that distance, trauma, sociality, and need to share.

The aesthetic dispositions range as much as ever as art does itself. Ranging from the abstract to the conceptual, from quilting to sculpture, from personal narrative to feminist semiotics the approaches are as diverse as can be. That is how it should be. What we see here is not a thorough thesis or a unified voice. Instead, what we see here are a constellation of artistic gestures that have been assembled in this virtual room, a self portrait if you will, that demonstrates the results of our evolving community.”

– Nato Thompson