Sinem Dişli
Exhibition view from 'Hollows and Mounds: A Take on Göbeklitepe', Leica Gallery, 2019
'Oyuklar ve Höyükler: Göbeklitepe'ye Bir Bakış' Sergi görüntüsü, Leica Galeri, 2019
In this exhibition Sinem Dişli focuses on Göbekli Tepe, a monumental structure built by hunter-gatherers by shaping limestone, basalt and flint stone, as part of a series of works she has been producing for a decade around the Euphrates River and Mesopotamia region of Urfa, the city where she was born and raised.
The artist examines the multi-layered past of Göbekli Tepe and the region, as well as the layers of history and soil, through a language that alternates between fiction and documentary. She explores the complexity of the earth, the cycles of human beings in their interactions with stone and water containing the residues of millions of years. By tracing the ancient origins of everyday rituals, she looks for clues to reinterpret history and generate new approaches to our relationship with our environment. With a keen interest in the ways archaeology and geology deal with the fragile cycles of life and how we read and construct history through the stone. She observes the spaces, actions, and games we create, whether hitting one stone to another or looking to the wide universe. Attentive to the limitations of the photographic medium and remaining within its ambiguous nature, she seeks to establish open-ended associations between time, space and living beings, starting from our ways of perceiving binaries such as below and above ground, earth and sky, past and present, night and day.
“Hollows and Mounds: A Take On Göbekli Tepe”, the first joint project between Ara Güler Museum and Leica Gallery Istanbul, took place between September 16th 2019 - February 15th 2020 in both gallery and museum.
Bu sergi ile Sinem Dişli, doğup büyüdüğü şehir Urfa’yı da kapsayan Mezopotamya bölgesi ve Fırat Nehri üzerine son on yıldır yaptığı çalışmalarıyla birlikte yaklaşık oniki bin yıl önce avcı-toplayıcıların kalker, bazalt ve çakmaktaşına şekil vererek inşa ettiği anıtsal yapı Göbeklitepe’ye odaklanıyor.
Sanatçı Göbeklitepe ve bölgesinin çok katmanlı geçmişini, tarihi ve toprağın katmanlarını belgesel ile kurgu arasında gidip gelen bir dil ile araştırıyor. Yerkürenin karmaşıklığını, insanın milyonlarca yılın yaşam tortularını barındıran taş ve suyla ilişkisindeki döngüleri ve günümüzde süregiden etkileşimlerini derinlemesine inceliyor. Gündelik ritüellerin kadim kökenlerinin izlerini sürerek tarihin yeniden yorumlanmasını ve çevremizle olan ilişkimize yeni yaklaşımlar geliştirmemizi sağlayabilecek ipuçları arıyor. Arkeoloji ve jeoloji gibi alanların hayatın kırılgan döngülerini ele alış biçimleriyle tarihi taş üzerinden nasıl okuduğumuza ve kurguladığımıza bakarak, taşı taşa vurarak yarattığımız mekanları, eylem ve oyunları gözlemliyor, evreni ve zamansallığı nasıl algıladığımıza bakıyor. Fotoğraf mecrasının sınırlılıklarını da sahiplenerek, onun muğlak doğası içinde, yer altı ve üstü, yeryüzü ve gökyüzü, geçmiş ve şimdi, gece ve gündüz gibi ikililikleri algılama biçimlerimizden yola çıkarak, zaman, mekân ve canlılar arasında ucu açık birliktelikler oluşturmaya girişiyor.
Ara Güler Müzesi ve Leica Galeri İstanbul’un ilk ortak projesi olan “Oyuklar ve Höyükler: Göbekli Tepe’ye Bir Bakış” başlıklı sergi 16 Eylül 2019-15 Şubat 2020 tarihleri arasında bu iki mekanda gerçekleşti.
2010 - 2019
STILLS
ALTERNATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY
ARTIST BOOK
INSTALLATIONS
MOVING IMAGES
EXHIBITION VIEWS
ESSAYS
ESSAYS FROM THE ARTIST BOOK HOLLOWS AND MOUNDS: A TAKE ON GÖBEKLİTEPE
"OYUKLAR VE HÖYÜKLER: GÖBEKLİTEPE'YE BİR BAKIŞ" KİTABINDAN YAZILAR
"A barren mound in an arid landscape is a potential site once inhabited by early humans, lush with tropical vegetation, exotic animals, and fruits. A limestone landscape, now cluttered with factories and highways, is also a carbonate sediment of coagulated marine organisms, evoking long-term, dramatic action taking place in an extremely slow-paced register of time. A deep sense of reciprocity binds together the present and the primeval, the ephemeral and the slow."
Ahmet A. Ersoy is Associate Professor of History at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He is a specialist of late Ottoman cultural history.
"Drawing on postcolonial sensitivities of archaeology and its complicated relationship with photography and representation in her interpretation of archaeological objects or sites, the artist, brought an awareness of a baggage which become particularly important in Turkey where archaeology has historically been used and abused in service of nation-building and westernization processes. 10 In a way, Dişli’s motivation for looking at the past and photographing historical sites near Urfa has not simply been creating artistic images of excavation sites or making art about archaeology. Previously demonstrated by her earlier video Revisit (2012-14) and photographs Cave and Holy Hill (both 2015), Dişli’s new images defy any kind of linear or grand narrative and collapse different temporalities onto each other."
L. Ipek Ulusoy Akgül is an independent writer, editor and curator currently based in Istanbul.
"We often talk about the passage of time but it might be more accurate to speak of the passage of things through time. For time will always be there, but we will not. Our things will not. Sinem Dişli’s works whisper: it is not, after all, time that passes, but us that pass through the stillness of time. This should be as obvious as saying that the planets revolve around the sun and not the other way around. But still we speak of the passage of time. To recognize the passage of ourselves… it changes everything."
Wendy M. K. Shaw is professor of the art history of Islamic cultures at the Free University Berlin. She works on the impact of colonialism on culture. Her most recent book, What is “Islamic” Art? Between Religion and Perception comes out from Cambridge University Press in October, 2019.
"Göbekli Tepe, as well as being an archaeological enigma, stands for the eternal struggle between creation and created. The stone circles may represent the cosmos and the natural world, but they are also a symbol of the artificial. The challenge was, and remains still, how to combine the hard lines of stone with the soft curves of art. In the exhibition “Hollows and Mounds–Oyuklar ve Höyükler”, Sinem Dişli explores these relationships and offers a personal interpretation through her art."
Dr. Christopher Lightfoot is an archaeologist, specialist in ancient glass and, until recently, the Curator of Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.