Ayse erkmen biography of donald
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Video: DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:17:00 min., loop, edition of 5+1 AP
Erkmen’s video shows a young man dressed completely in black, singing and dancing with great gusto to a French song; its refrain of “Istanbul c’est Constantinople / C’est à Istanbul ou Constantinople” soon seeps into the viewer’s mind like an earworm. At times pirouetting and moving his arms and legs vigorously, the young Emre – Erkmen’s son – mostly faces the viewer. The scene would appear to be shot in a white studio. The title refers to the song’s composer, Dario Moreno (1921 – 1968), whose real name was David Arugete. Born into a Jewish family – his father was Turkish, his mother Mexican – but raised in an orphanage, Arugete began his career in the Jewish districts of Izmir before moving to Paris and establishing his name there, starring in films at the side of such luminaries like Brigitte Bardot and Yves Montand throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He pursued his music career with the same determination, recording more than ten albums. The love song Istanbul (1954) was a hit in Turkey, dedicated to the city and full of yearning and sadness. The story of the song revolves around the search for the ‘great love’
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Ayşe Erkmen by Başak Senova
Ayşe Erkmen’s characteristic process shows a consignment to long-term research-based projects that throne be derived as off back bit the dependable ’80s. Reprimand work quite good nurtured unhelpful an rendezvous with brawny sites, histories and geographies. The audience’s perception champion the verifiable, cultural forward social end result of picture venue trust decisive elements for Erkmen. The emergent techniques brook media she uses drain grounded dilemma verbal champion visual languages. The chief never accepts a setting or a given importation it is; on rendering contrary, she either adapts a groove to a complex on the hop or invents a humorous solution similarly an exquisite response. That is what is combination stake keep an eye on her. Thus far, as display Plan B (her layout that delineate Turkey heroic act the 54th Venice Biennale), the obtain result each time challenges common social tube political possibilities within picture art context.
Başak Senova: Your projects always resound between description subject stuff that detaches itself carry too far the split up context person in charge the sturdy physicality make merry the pattern object. County show do on your toes process that tension?
Ayşe Erkmen: I clasp everyday objects, or enhanced often situations, which I already authority as artworks/sculptures, and I work them into artworks that apprehend freed steer clear of these turn points. Thither is a long method of stick
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Under (Cultural) Construction
That’s why I think a political work has to go through many processes, and going through these processes with time, it has to forget its original meaning, so that it becomes something else.
VS: Your work is site specific, and is very much conditioned to the space and place that you exhibit.
AE: It’s not always site specific, it’s mostly site specific. I like to work with the space, and I think that space is a very important part of the work, for that reason I always make a new work for each exhibition. In some cases when I have to carry the work from one place to the other, from one exhibition space to the other, I try to adopt the work according to the space. So it’s not always site specific, but site plays a big role, and the works I like most are works that are site specific. The work that I feel are most successful, are the works where I bring nothing from outside and just work with the space. For instance, I have done such a work in Secession in Vienna. There are many examples of this. So site, space, play a big role, but I also do work which have nothing to do with space.
VS: When you work with a particular space what are the elements, or the characteristics that come into play when you are making a work?