ARTISTIC DIALOGUES I: Şener Özmen and Nevin Aladağ
Exhibition
21. April 2011 - 29. Mai 2011
Opening:
Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 7pm
8pm: Book Launch „The Book of Şener Özmen“ and „The Story of Tracey Emin“ (reissue)
10pm: Party ARTISTS ON TURNTABLES
Curator’s Tour:
Thursday, May 19, 2011, 6pm
Guided Tour through the exhibition with Adnan Yildiz, Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
ARTISTIC DIALOGUES I
Şener Özmen: The Story of Şener Özmen
Nevin Aladağ: Back to First Position
“The Story of Şener Özmen“ is the first solo show in the twenty one year artistic career of Kurdish artist Şener Özmen. This will be presented alongside the first monographic exhibition from Nevin Aladağ in her hometown Stuttgart, “Back to First Position“, bridging different cultural climates and challenging current political representations.
Both solo shows opening on Wednesday, April 20, 7pm, are presented within the framework of ARTISTIC DIALOGUES, a series of solo exhibition projects at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart that bring interrelated contexts, parallel discussions, and juxtaposed ideas together through diverse artistic practices.
Diyarbakır-based Kurdish artist and writer Şener Özmen’s work is shaped within the geopolitical reality of South Anatolia, where he lives and works – not only as an open critique of state violence and militarist regime, but also as loose diary of resistance and imagination.
Özmen’s video, literary and photography works deal with the problematic nature of taking critical positions against centralizations of power at the periphery. In relation to the city context of Stuttgart, the exhibition aims to develop a retrospective look at his work and regenerate some of his previous pieces. For instance, “The Story of Tracey Emin”, his artist book from 2000, is reissued in collaboration with Stuttgart based artist-book publication collective, Edition Taube.
As a cultural observer with an artistic eye, Berlin based artist Nevin Aladağ investigates human settings and develops non-narrative stories, conceptual interactions and performative interventions. She is interested in the conditions of communal living, sharing spaces, musical elements and rituals that connect people.
Aladağ grew up in Stuttgart until her early twenties before attending the Munich Art Academy. Aladağ’s first major solo project in her home town brings together a compilation of ideas, which return to Stuttgart, where they were first created or have their roots promising its title.
Both solo projects from Şener Özmen and Nevin Aladağ share conceptual grounds by challenging the ways of looking at culture and identity. Both practices focus on the individual positions pointing at the social realities behind territories, categorizations and partiality.
Through their practices brought together in a parallel show, stories from Kurds in Turkey or Turks in Germany, music from Istanbul and Diyarbakir’s landscape as well as two different styles of humor and irony will crash into each other.
