In the middle and in movement
How to reconcile imagination and political emergencies with one’s own contradictions? How to take a stand as an artist or a citizen? How to avoid oriental representations and clichés in art? Here are the questions which Inci Eviner attempts to work on daily and which summarize her life-path interwoven with both oriental and western culture. Since her studies at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts in 1980 and doctorate in 1992 from the University of Minar Sinan, Inci Eviner just continues travelling the world for her personal exhibits (Galeria Delta in Rotterdam, Galeri Nev in Istanbul and Ankara), and group exhibits (including “Harem” in Whitechapel, London in 2009, “Translocalmotion” 7th Biennale of Shanghai in 2008) and in residence (Leube in Salzburg, ISPC in New-York). Fueled by her reading about philosophy or psychoanalysis over the past thirty years, she’s able to keenly observe the movements towards globalization and the transformation in the art-world.
Singular plural
Nouveau citoyen, the title of her MAC/VAL project within the framework of the Year of Turkey in France (2009), just seemed obvious in regards to this artist’s path and concerns. This title (in the singular) emphasizes this ever-present and renewed commitment as well as the need to take citizenship seriously according to a principle of universality. But the masculine singular doesn’t exacerbate less the question of sex, the oppression of the patriarchal society which the artist has always displayed in numerous works, mainly through drawings, frescos and video.
Here she pursues her work on the power which interweaves double and poetic figures, notably perceivable in the drawing The Libido of Military School (2007) or in these numerous collages on paper from 2006 which favour incorporation between Man and animal.
Variations in points of view
Stolen Signs, installation presented at the Istanbul Fair in 2006, was already exploring the mixture of fresco, wall-paper, ornamental motifs associated with consumer symbols, erotic details and figures subject to oppression and violence. From the total scheme of wall-paper to the sticker figures, this contraction of gaps finds a focalization point in the three animated movies which punctuate the wall of Nouveau citoyen.
The spectator thus discovers bodies constrained by their clothes, architectural fragments, dressed or masked bodies of adolescents with resolutely erotic postures, blending in a geometric neutrality of Iznik ceramic motifs or romantic imagination of Jouy canvasses. A deciphering, variations of points of view and association of contradictory, enigmatic figures which attract attention, this reflection so desired by Inci Eviner.
Extracted from MAC/VAL’s Residence Archives
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