South likes: Nevin Aladağ at Art Space Pythagorion, Samos

 

South likes: Nevin Aladağ at Art Space Pythagorion, Samos
Borderline
Art Space Pythagorion, Samos, Greece
20 July – 10 October, 2014

Text by Jorgina Stamogianni

The title of the exhibition is flirting with the amphesemy of the word, both a state of mental illness and a social convention that needs a cure. Art Space Pythagorion, a former abandoned hotel on the coastline of the Greek island of Samos, chose to focus on the work of the Turkish-German artist Nevin Aladağ for its annual show, creating what seems to be an in-situ exhibition, literally on the border of Greece and Turkey.

A large installation of fifteen wooden reels wrapped in fisher’s rope, occupies the main hall. The total length of the rope used is 1430 meters. Symbolizing the distance to the other side, the work invites the visitor to sit on it and gaze at the Turkish mainland which can be clearly seen through the large windows of the venue. At the same time, the external soundscape is brought indoors, through High Season Samos. This is a recording of the sound that one can hear just outside the venue. A day recording is followed by a much darker nocturnal take. The laughter of children playing by the sea is followed by boat engines and whispers in a foreign language, on an eternal loop of succesion. Children, tourists, locals, refugees, and always the sea…this liquid border, the bridge and barrier between Greece and Turkey, between Europe and Asia. On Border Sampling, Aladağ performs a poetic gesture given in a purely scientific manner. Collecting water samples from the international waters of Bodensee -the border between Austria, Germany and Switzerland- she provokes the viewer to contemplate on the physical existence of borders.

Walking towards the rest of the rooms, the sounds of the video works mingle, creating a meta local atmosphere. Voices of young Turks singing for their lost countries mix with the heels of girls dancing on the terrace of Flutgraben -just on the spot where a former world used to be separated, while some instruments are wandering freely through the deserts of Sarja composing a mystic melody. Nevin Aladağ , following her tendency to materialize the immaterial, is translating migration politics -a hot topic for the island- in the universal language of contemporary art. Inside and outside, local and foreign, mine and yours, all become blurry. Her series of commissioned works perfectly touch upon the current Greek external issues in a playful way, while some of her older works elevate the this borderline phenomenon on a global level.

Different borders, same problems. Outside the door, reality awaits. A new boat of illegal immigrants has just arrived on the island.

http://www.schwarzfoundation.com/en/projekte/art-space-pythagorion/2014/exhibition.html