Ümit Kıvanç, who is rather known through his writings and documentaries with political and social content, meets the audience with an exhibition indicating the difficulty of penetrating the entirety of perception. Kıvanç, who has been a narrator in his visual and written creations until now, turns the tables in the exhibition If Not? Bringing together Kıvanç’s photographs – the likes of which we have not seen from him until today – that he took in the years 2013-2014 and worked on since then, the exhibition puts the audience in the position of the narrator. It calls for the adventure of selection and interpretation. The act of seeing as a process of elimination and sorting; the state of not being able to see… It can be both entertaining and scary. Authentic spatiality and the detail detached from its context presents itself as space. Through gaps, that make one feel as if one might fall into darkness, and lights coming out of an unknown source, it brings us into doubt about our assertions on perception, seeing, knowing, recognition.
What if we could establish our collective memory by also seeing the things that we cannot see although they are right beside us?