“We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable laws of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into the living.”¹
In her second solo exhibition entitled “Where Do You Stand?” to be held between January 24 – March 1, 2020 at SANATORIUM, Gizem Akkoyunoğlu treats the subject “purgatory” in which man has been being conceptually lost inside from past to present. The exhibition consisting of segments which render the human self unique aims at creating a space of confrontation with timeless elements that do not carry any geographical data.
When entering the exhibition venue, the audience is met by three dogs with a feeling of a deep darkness. In this work inspired by Caspar David Friedrich's work “The Abbey in the Oakwood”, Akkoyunlu presents an adaptation of the three-headed dog Cerberus in Greek mythology which stands in front of the subterranean kingdom in order to protect it. This encounter aims at provoking a feeling in us that we might be actually exiting the place while thinking that we are entering it. While reflecting upon where we stand after entering the place, we are included in the darkness that the exhibition invites us to. The scenes shown to us by Akkoyunoğlu invite us to descend into the depths of our layers.
¹ C.G. Jung, The Red Book, W.W. Norton & Company, p. 426
