JOURNEY OF FINDING BEAUTY
MUSCAT, OMAN / 2017
MULTI MEDIA EXHIBITION
Collaboration: Stal Gallery
Funded by Goethe Institute Gulf Region, Stal Gallery
What defines beauty? What lies in the eyes of the beholder? And what is considered beauty in the context of different cultures?
With the eyes of a trained architect and space strategist, I explored the cities that I was visiting, and I explored life in these cities.
During my residency in Oman, I studied what citizens find attractive in the architecture of their places. Thru systematically designed
city tours I developed a unique and very personal map of the respective city.
As the artist in residence of Goethe-Institute and StalGallery, I once again went in search for a typology of architecture of the various periods in the history and development of Muscat. What structures do the Omanis of Muscat see as particularly valuable in their city? I invited artists, architects, and designers for workshops to debate beauty, desires and values.
For several days we delved into their city, moving with different means of transport or just walking along. Thus we discovered our different views on buildings and places and tried to find out why someone finds a house or place beautiful and what emotions this evokes.
Gathering the individual experiences generated a new and personal structure of the city. Everyone in our group had an individual definition for the beauty of the city. One could say that everyone had his or her very own beautiful city, with an own soul and a place of desires. The personal views on beauty of each participants was translated into an interpretation of each understanding. This is one example of the general understanding of Riham Noor who explained during the workshop that for her beauty is: Minimalism and simplicity.
The individual works of the group were interpreted and transported into a video and also combined into a mindmap, also including my personal view on the city. The result is both a view on the city and a protocol of a process which was shown in an exhibition at StalGallery from 17 October to 2 November 2017.
During my observations in the city I found unused spaces which triggered my fantasy. I developed a series of videos which fill in those gaps within the city.
MIGRATING ARCHITECTURE
TU BERLIN, GERMANY / 2013 – 2016
ARTISTIC RESEARCH PROJECT
IN COOPERATION WITH PROF. STEFANIE BÜRKLE, VERONIKA BÖCKELMANN, ILKIN AKPINAR, FULYA ERDEM, KOUROSH ZARGHANI
SPONSORED BY VOLKSWAGEN
„For me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original
moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‚third space‘ which enables other positions to emerge.“ Homi Bhabha
When people move, so do spaces, along with images, cultural practices and lifestyles. Migrating Spaces examines the common elements of domestic architecture in Germany that are integrated into homes built by former guest workers upon their „definitive return“ to Turkey. The study questions how cultural experiences and memories define complex identities within the built environment. Examining closely homes that were designed and often built by the owners themselves, the exhibition aims to establish a typology of architecture of these various socio-spatial implementations. Details in the build of these homes often express expectations about future life in Turkey, impressions from a past spent in Germany, and also translate personal memories from childhood years.
The catalog of methodologies of the research project included ‚field research‘, ‚Interviews‘, video research‘ and ‚photography research‘. In seven trips to Turkey we visited around 40 houses to collect Data: The informations have been evluated and interpreted with artistic methods. Further we did seminars with students of the TU Berlin, institute for architecture to generate material.