BROKEN MEMORIES

Funded artist: Andréas Lang

Andréas Lang has been working on the topic of memory and history in Turkey since his stipend and residency at Tarabya Cultural Academy. Through his images in Broken Memories he reflects on disappearance, discontinuity, and the many layers of historical inscription in Turkish landscapes, that leaves visible cues about a collective memory rendered invisible.

Lang calls his work method visual archeology: revealing the different layers of history, mythology and the present. The pictures appear like stages or filmsets, as if in suspension, in a limbo between past, present and future. In this way the images become a place for the imaginary and its projection; at times blending or colliding with immanent social, political and ecological realities. After a phase of intensive research, he travels to the places in question to take pictures and employs this in Broken Memories by looking at history and memory in Turkey, on the writing and overwriting of history. He particularly focuses on places connected to the late Ottoman Empire, the Armenian heritage, events of 1915 and the beginning of the Republic; also on what is remembered and what is left to oblivion.

Curated by Refik Akyüz and Serdar Darendeliler from the Geniş Açı Project Office [GAPO], the exhibition will be accompanied by a book to be published in May by Kerber Verlag

This exhibition was supported by ifa's Exhibition Funding.

More information on the event location's website.