Aslı Çavuşoğlu: Murder in Three Acts

The first stage of the work, executed by a professional crew of actors and producers, was structured as a real-time performance, viewable by visitors to the fair. Consisting of three episodes, Murder in Three Acts was filmed as one episode per day. The art-fair booth that served as the set for Murder in Three Acts was separated into two parts: a pseudo art space where the exhibited art works were involved in the crime and an ad-hoc forensics lab where these objects were examined as pieces of evidence.

Utilizing the modus operandi and parlance of television crime dramas, the project compares forensic experts with art professionals, based on their methodologies of extracting the ‘truth’ from physical artifacts. Murder in Three Acts, through the comparison of these two distinct tradecrafts, seeks to underline the construction and legitimization of a story when it is anchored by expertise. The process-based nature of unraveling the work, at Frieze and now at NON, is a nod to the piecemeal transformation of an object into a readable text in the process of interpretation or analysis.

The exhibition will include the screening of three episodes of Murder in Three Acts, along with behind-the-scenes footage of the process, filmed by Taylan Mutaf. Additionally, the props in the series return in the exhibition as objects in their own right. Seen together, they form a collection that hints at the proliferation of stories that arise from their juxtaposition, underlining the speculative nature of building a collection—whether of evidence or art.

Asli Cavusoglu’s projects examine the way in which cultural and historical facts are transformed, represented, and interpreted by individuals. Working across various media, Çavuşoğlu often assumes the role of an interpreter, writer or facilitator in her projects in order to highlight the precarious and subjective nature of our shared histories, questioning those who frame these experiences.

Murder in Three Acts was commissioned and produced by Frieze Projects in partnership with Delfina Foundation’s artist-in-residency program. The project was produced in association with Manifold Projects.

Asli Cavusoglu (b. 1982) is based in Istanbul. Recent group exhibitions include: Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment, Arter, Istanbul, TR (2013); Signs Taken in Wonder, MAK Museum, Vienna, AT (2013); Material Information, Art Museums of Bergen Permanenten, Bergen, NO (2012); 11th Baltic Triennial of International Art, Vilnius (2012); Performa11, New York (2011); Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin (2010); Fantasy & Island, FRAC Corse, Corsica (2010); This Place You See Has No Size At All, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, FR (2009) and Everyday Challengers, Hisk, Gent, B (2009).