In this exhibition, which is a continuation of the "Life in Plastic" series that Soleimanpour started in 2021 with her work titled "You can be anything - if we let", the artist asks: "Is the life I live plastic?", "Am I really happy?", "Why did I choose these sentences? ”, “How many of my choices are my own?”, “What does it mean to be me?”, “Are my memories real?”, “Am I in a dream?” He directs his questions to himself. The artist also presents, through her personal observations, the sociological effects of social norms and political strategies that have been encoded in girls' brains through plastic from an early age, and questions plastic from an activist perspective, in the context of both a commodity and a metaphor, based on the awakening journey of her own consciousness.
“Who created social definitions and rules, when and for what? Are our actions and decisions the results of our free will, or are we in a manipulation that we do not realize and do what is expected of us? Perhaps we are in an abstract box that we have created in our minds... In Sayna Soleimanpour's Life in Plastic exhibition, we are greeted at the entrance of the gallery by a giant box of "chosen roles" that visitors can enter, as if it is always waiting insistently. Mother, father, someone's successful child, friend, spouse, lover, artist, worker, white-collar worker, celebrity, athlete... We are in a box where we play like dolls with the roles that society has assigned to us and the behavioral codes it has assigned to our roles. In this exhibition, it is up to us to get out of the box with the artist... Will we choose the blue pill or the red pill?
(...) “I was burned and cooked. I died before I died. I learned that I had to embrace everything about my existence. And then…I was born again.”
What about you, are you ready to dare?”
-Quotation from the exhibition text written by Irmak Özer.
The exhibition can be seen at x-ist's venue in Karaköy between 16 April and 18 May 2024, from Tuesday to Saturday between 11.00 and 19.00.