The exhibition titled "Souvenirs of the Future", which explores the connections established between memory and future imaginations through contemporary works, based on the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation Kutahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection, was shown at Pera Museum.
FATMA BATUKAN BELGE
Pera Museum's exhibition "Souvenirs of the Future", prepared in memory of Suna Kirac, inspired by the Kutahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection, hosted its visitors between 26 September 2023 and 24 March 2024. Some pieces from the Suna and Inan Kirac Foundation's Kutahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection were also exhibited in the same venue along with contemporary works.
Contemporary works of Adriana Varejão, Asli Cavusoglu, Bilal Yilmaz, Burcak Bingol, Candice Lin, Deniz Eroglu, Elif Uras, Francesco Simeti, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Livia Marin, Metehan Torer, Neven Allgeier, oddviz, Skuja Braden, Taner Ceylan, Volkan Aslan, Yasemin Ozcan and Zsófia Keresztes inspired by the tile collection were exhibited in the Souvenirs of the Future curated by Ulya Soley.
The exhibition, which consisted of four sections titled "Reminiscences of Motifs", "Memory of Objects", "Memory of the Region" and "Remembering the Future", suggested thinking about how we will remember the future, instead of leaving nostalgic for the past. Curator Ulya Soley designed the exhibition by approaching the archive from a future-oriented perspective. Through the works in the exhibition, answers to these questions were sought: “Can the future be remembered through familiar objects accumulated over time? Could there be a tool that would change the memories that will determine the piece in the future and make it easier to understand and preserve the past?"
Candice Lin Zsofia Keresztes
Burcak Bingol, whose work titled "Route Saz Yolu" is included in the “Reminiscences of Motifs" section of the exhibition, uses ceramics as a cultural material and uses familiar forms and images in the visual expression of Eastern and Western traditions. Since 2017, she has been conducting research on the cultural effects of the 16th century tile panel painted by Sahkulu in Topkapı Palace on China, the Ottoman Empire and Europe along the Silk Road. In the speech titled "Tiles and Stories" held in parallel with this exhibition, Burcak Bingol and architect and researcher Gertrud Olsson, who wrote a book on the history of Ottoman wall tiles, focused on cultural heritage in the context of ceramics, traditions and identity.
Elif Uras, another artist who uses ceramics as a cultural material, places the female figure, which refers to the Mother Goddess of Anatolian origin, at the center in her work titled "Double Niche". Focusing on the changing concepts of gender and class in the context of the struggle between modernity and tradition, the artist has been interested in Iznik ceramics since 2007 and produces her works with the support of artisans at the Iznik Foundation.
American artist Candice Lin, who uses every possible material we can think of to ask questions about colonial histories, took part in this exhibition with her installation titled "A Hard White Body, A Porous Slip". Working with porcelains that evoke objects found in the remains of a shipwreck in the future, the artist touches on the history of global trade. It also adds a feminist discourse by reminding us of the story of Jeanne Baret, the first female botanist who impersonated a man and went on a journey overseas in the 18th century.Skuja Braden collaboration objectified the memory of a day they spent in the museum with the installation "Time Stream". The work, which seems like a decorative panel at first glance, contains images of the works in the museum that they shot with their mobile phones that day. These images, which remain in an endless digital archive that we usually never look back at, are transferred to ceramics that have survived for Aslı Çavuşoğlu (middle left) Metehan Törer (bottom) thousands of years.
It suggests that the memory of ceramic objects floating in the river in the background, symbolizing the fluidity of time, may be more permanent than the memory of digital tools.
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