x-ist participates in Art HK 12 (17 – 20 May) with Ekin Saclioglu’s solo project ‘What Remains, What Goes’.
In terms of narrative quality and material use, Ekin Saçlıoğlu is one the freest souls Turkish Contemporary Art has seen until today. x-ist has had the pleasure of hosting her 5 solo shows since 2004 as she produces with growing courage and imagination. By using new and unusual media, such as latex, glow in the dark paintings, and human hair, the young artistbreaks new ground every time.
Ekin Saçlıoğlu paints her own or other people’s stories, moods or fantasies, and her works lie somewhere in the realm between consciousness and dreams. She is interested in how memory affects and changes a story, positioning this tranformation in the area between fiction and reality. She is interested in the symbols that can be derived from stories through free association, and in the ambiguity these symbols trigger.
The works in the project, made with real human hair on latex, resemble family photographs hung on walls. According to a Sicilian tradition that the artist observed firsthand, the photographs of living people are attached to the wall at an angle, leaving room for air, while the photographs of dead people touch the wall at all points, evoking a grave.
The exhibited works, stemming from the stories of men and women living in a calm and peaceful seaside region, depict vanishing hopes, dreams and what is left of them. Saçlıoğlu highlights the similarity between the thought clarifying effects of transplanting hair as an artistic activity and routine daily chores, both requiring patience and dedication.
The artist, who transforms biological hair into an artistic medium, uses a synthetic material in her depiction of a fictional space plant in the Uzot sculptures. (Uzot: short for “space plant” in Turkish) Unlike the works which originate in the everyday, these sculptures present a biological design that doesn’t really exist.
Saçlıoğlu’s Project has been displayed at The Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, in the show titled “Dream and Reality: Modern and Contemporary Women Artists From Turkey” (16 September 2011 – 22 January, 2012).
We invite everyone to see Saclioglu’s unique project at booth 1X9 in the Asia One section of Art HK 12.