SANATORIUM presents Betwixt and Between group exhibition proposed by Ankara Queer Art Program featuring works by Arda Asena, Yağız Gülseven, Erin Johnson, Dilan Onay and Alex Turgeon, curated by Aylime Aslı Demir on from 24 March to 13 May 2023. The exhibition focuses on the effort to explore the available possibilities of what exists betwixt and between, as well as queer art’s desire to add new potentials to the world. Betwixt and Between is the inaugural exhibition of Spring Call, a new SANATORIUM series supporting independent art organizations in Turkey.
When the well-known words “Non plus ultra” were engraved on the Pillars of Hercules, they didn’t only impose the idea of limits on a world with nothing beyond it, but also added the provoking courage of a desire waiting in ambush without any opportunity to sin; plus ultra. The call of the beyond, and perhaps of the indeterminacy, or rather the ambiguity engendered by the indeterminacy of what is called for, set free the carnivalesque images of the not-yet-discovered worlds in night-and-daydreams. It managed to throw much more of these images that are far more destructive into the middle of ‘the-already-historical worlds. What if that which already exists is far beyond what it is? What if the dualities determined in this time and space by the norm, the law or legitimacy flow not from the “the Truth of Being” but from the needs of the sovereign?
When confronting in theory and practice, with all its might, a static and uncompleted ontology with a dynamic ontology that considers the potentialities, the queer with its focus on what is betwixt and between managed to save the indeterminacy from the cruelty of justice before. Now once again, we are in the presence of the court of “uncertainty” that has been called by being characterized by ‘guilt’ and taking root in insecurity in the time and geography in which we live.
In Betwixt and Between, Yağız Gülseven welcomes visitors with a multidimensional forest with fragmented patterns, while Erin Johnson presents a video installation that combines two different subjects full of uncertainties, showing a modernist house designed and built by two women and their failed attempts to map the ocean floors. Alex Turgeon questions the construction of spaces and language structured by social norms through queer thinking. Arda Asena, who creates works in between mediums and forms, presents the individual and collective ambiguous powers of bodies with weaving and watercolor. Dilan Onay, whose performances draw from different disciplines, invites us to experience together the uncertainty of freedom against the uncertainty of arbitrariness.
About SANATORIUM Spring Call
SANATORIUM started the Spring Call to share its exhibition space in the Juma building with art organizations, artist collectives, and initiatives across Turkey with the aim of sharing the resources and to create a support structure. This year Mari Spirito, Executive Director, Curator of Protocinema, served as a juror to select one qualified proposal and provided guidance for the art initiative to realize its exhibition for the inauguration of SANATORIUM’s Spring Call: Invitation for Independent Art Organizations.