1.3 MP milestones from a migrant memory Asly Aktuğ is an artist leaving behind a trail of stones on her path, stones that she has filled her pockets with from the shores of islands along the western hemisphere. Although at times the trail of pebbles is replaced with breadcrumbs - they help her in finding her way along her life. The works of Aktuğ, now residing in Paris, are these stones and breadcrumbs.Her paper sculptures (which she has now destroyed), photographs and videos are witnesses to this melancholy journey. Aktuğ's first ever show in Turkey “Indecisive Moment” is a selection of photographs and videos that she created with the aid of her cell phone. The title is referential; bringing to mind Henri Cartier-Bresson's “Decisive Moment”. For Aktuğ at any moment, any thing is photographable; it is not necessarily important that the images be lighted or framed properly. It is also not important that these images were captured by way of a cell phone, pixilated and flu. Aktuğ's photographs capture those moments that we might not be aware of, these instants that are hidden in our subconscious, that are the raw materials of dreams.The exhibit documents that crucial moment when the artist looks back along the path to see that the pebbles are in disarray and that the breadcrumbs have vanished, that our memories are not trapped in heavy frames and that coincidence plays a greater part than ever assumed. These captured dream segments from a surreal circus are witnesses to this strange journey. It is left up to the viewer to decide whether to pickup these rocks that lie on the way.
Zeynep Şanlıer September'07