Crossing Lines

Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Nezaket Ekici, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Paul Hodgson, Antonio Riello, Taus Makhacheva

Following the exhibitions in London and its launch event in Istanbul, the international art project Open Space Istanbul in collaboration with Open Dialogue Istanbul, which aim to bring together the artists, curators and art professionals, is getting ready for its next exhibition entitled Crossing Lines that will take place in London. Crossing Lines aims to explore the alienation and estrangement process each individual goes through in life, through the interpretations of seven artists from different backgrounds and nationalities.

Artists often explore the characteristics that determine our personal and social identity. They construct a sense of who we are as individuals, as a society, or as a nation. They question stereotypes and conventions while exploring attributes such as gender, sexuality, race, nationality and heritage. Therefore, artists' response and interpretation to this idea of Crossing Lines is vital.

Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt's video, titled On the Stage, consists of performative scenes of poses of the protesters that are taken from photographs of actual demonstrations. Paul Hodgson's paintings, however, both Untitled 7 and Untitled 9, employ different types of pictorial language within a single image in a more subtle way. While Ergin Cavuşoğlu's video Résurrection des Mannequins is detailed and descriptive, his Hanged Man relief takes a more forward approach in exploring identity and this aspect of suffering of one's identity. Antonio Riello's artistic practice assimilates today's artistic production to more or less an elaborate and ritual form of "identity trafficking." In Nezaket Ekici's video Veiling and Revealing, one can see that the artist explores intimacy and openness, with the politics of visibility and concealment offset by a playful (self-) representation. Lastly, in her early video work Carpet, Taus Makhacheva constantly rolls in and out of an old Dagestani carpet, known as a kilim. The carpet's design symbolises the Garden of Eden.

All of these individual approaches to "identity" will be explored thoroughly with the exhibition Crossing Lines by also including side events, such as performances, discursive talks, symposiums and presentations, each exploring the topics of identity and culture in order to open up to other possible exhibitions and projects.