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Bengü Karaduman Spot On #5
THE PLANETS ARE ATTACHED TO THIS TREE WITH A THREAD
Bengü Karaduman, known for her interdisciplinary projects in the contemporary art scene in İstanbul,
is the youngest artists ever represented in the SPOT ON exhibition series which focus on artists in the
Borusan Contemporary collection. Previous SPOT ON artists were eminent figures of the international
contemporary art world such as Manfred Mohr, Ola Kolehmainen, Sol LeWitt and François Morellet,
and this is the first time works of a Turkish artist will be exhibited as part of the SPOT ON series on the
third and fourth floor of Borusan Contemporary.
Karaduman’s project titled “The Planets Are Attached To This Tree With A Thread” could be considered,
in whole, as a site-specific installation comprising as diverse techniques as video, animation,
performance, sculpture, drawing and collage. The artist aims to divert the viewer’s attention away
from causality and have them focus on the sky, stars and messages from other worlds by embarking
on different visual experiments to ensure this “change of perception”. Her works in the Borusan
Contemporary Collection and those realized for this exhibition brought together, they point at the
condition of today’s human beings who are in a constant search for “standpoint” for themselves.
The variety of visual forms Karaduman has employed ever since attains a level enveloping the viewer
in themselves with direct interventions to the space in this exhibition. The artist has turned the
exhibition space, the third and fourth floors of Perili Köşk, into a something that can be conceived as
a whole because she does see architecture as merely a “shell”. Together with the physical presence
of the Borusan employees spending an important part of their daily lives in Perili Köşk, she manages
to create a project focusing on the “wish for freedom”.
Even though technological progress is overshadowed by the elements that facilitate the lives of human
beings, it manages to makes us ponder on the significance of the modern individual’s questions
“Whom have I become, Where have I found myself, Where am I going”. In search for answers to
these eminent questions, Karaduman takes the uneasiness created by these times we are living in
on our bodies and our souls as a starting point. She irrationally but intentionally uses the tree of life
concept attributed to the shamans to present the images of other planets and imaginary worlds to
the viewer. Karaduman’s approach to shaman philosophy and mythology also bears importance in
respect of the conceptual approach and performance techniques she has specially developed for this
exhibition, because the shamanic figures in the exhibition assume the function of uttering modern
individuals’ inner messages and screams in addition to their usual duties of healing the sick and
making wishes come true.
The video Works “Day Pole” and “Night Pole” which are the backbone of the exhibition starts with
the elevator which operates between the third and fourth floors of Perili Köşk. When the doors of the
elevator open, shamans with different costumes appear with dances and rituals and then disappear.
Karaduman’s animation which is realized by using video techniques and which shows these shamans
and their world, functions like a combining element for all the works in the exhibition. When she puts
these shamans on the stage as a protest against the technology’s effect of reducing the individual’s
relationship with nature to a minimum, she succeeds in bringing about the most unexpected, most
innocent and the innermost to the foreground. Representing an animist approach to life, the shamans
ensure an “energy flow” by summoning the strength to overcome hardships by supernatural powers
they have collected from the sky and the stars. Karaduman’s work presents the individual’s wish to be
free and himself/herself in the form of images using visual codes and metaphors.
Karaduman’s images in the exhibition use “dual elements”. Many of the motifs in the exhibition are
repeated with black-white contrasts and the opposing concepts of upper-lower, full-empty turn into
leitmotifs in the hands of the artist. As the shamans in the video projections are also used in the other
visual elements of the exhibition by way of association, the viewer is presented with quite a different
model of reading. When Karaduman presentes the location of the celestial objects on the northern
and southern hempisheres using symbols, signs and maps and adds the costumes she designed
for the shamans to the exhibition, she provides clues as to what is real and what is fiction. Some of
the objects attached to these costumes for luck and good fortune are contributed by the Borusan
employees.
Karaduman’s exhibition “The Planets Are Attached To This Tree With A Thread” reminds the viewer
that a “real life” which may succeeded in establishing a direct relationship with nature is possible.
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