01/10/24
Featured:
Maria Korolkova
"Critical Shifts," is a group exhibition reinterpreting the notion of displacement in contemporary culture, will be held at Barin Han art centre in Istanbul, Turkey.
The exhibition challenges conventional understandings of displacement, presenting it as a vital and dynamic force in shaping contemporary existence. While displacement often connotes challenges of contemporary conditions—migration, exile, or colonial extraction—"Critical Shifts" explores the creative potential within these shifts, celebrating the possibilities they offer for transformation and renewal.
“Displacement of people and matter may have become a common place within contemporary artistic and social context, yet most often it is associated with challenging conditions of migration or colonial extraction. With “Critical Shifts” we propose to go beyond the fractures and dislocations into the possibilities of the new, when the shifted and the displaced is celebrated in its creativity and acknowledged as the new constant”, – the curatorial team states.
The choice of Istanbul and Barin Han art centre, located at the heart of the Old City, is also crucial as no other city can represent such powerful shifts and collision of displacements in its various forms and histories – between people and landscapes, land and water, the old and new, the historical and the contemporary. Taking up Barin Han four floors, Critical Shift follows the shifting narrative from works that measure the chaos, through works that deconstruct the old, culminating in the idea of shifting as a new constant.
Curators: Maria Korolkova, Margarita Osepyan, and Kate Umnova
Artists: Greta Alfraro, Rong Bao, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Burçak Bingöl, Gülizar Çepoğlu, Marjolijn Dijkman, Sinem Dişli, FRAUD, Jim Hobbs, Merve İşeri, Saodat Ismailova, Ege Kanar, Jiabao Li, Marie-Luce Nadal, Yağiz Özgen, Julien Prévieux, Sümer Sayin, Pip Thornton, Dimitri Venkov, Emma Waltraud Howes, Cansu Yıldıran
Photo: Sümer Sayin - 'Island(s) of Escape', installation fragment, 2022