Cigdem Aydemir will be a part of the Dark Mofo Festival 2023, specifically the 'Interfacial Intimacies', taking place at the Plimsoll Gallery in Hobart, Tasmania 8 - 11 and 15 - 18 June 2023.
Stasis (A map of home), 2019
When I look at the artworks I have made over the last fifteen years I sometimes feel like my 13 year old self would be disappointed. I would have thought it was deceiving for a non-veil-wearing woman to make artworks wearing the veil. I am comforted, instead, by the words of feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti who writes about identity as being under constant reconstruction:
“Identity is retrospective; representing it entails that we can draw accurate maps, indeed, but only of where we have already been and consequently no longer are.”
(Braidotti, 1994, p.35)
She also emphasises that as nomadic subjects, we are not always in motion. In fact, we need moments of rest, or stasis, in order to grasp our nomadism. Stasis could also be thought of as a moment of equilibrium, where opposing or conflicting forces lie in balance.
In this work I present a map of sorts, it is the tan line of my veil produced while sitting
under the sun. It is my attempt at connecting with my 13-year-old self, who loved
spending time at the beach. It is also about consolidating multiple ideas of home, like
a true nomad, and finding peace and comfort in them all.
-Cigdem Aydemir
INTERFACIAL INTIMACIES
Is the ‘self’ just a trustworthy container within which you can be found? Or is it a chain of many selfhoods, threaded together by our own perceptions and of those around us? Spanning a diversity of mediums, a series of portraits and anti-portraits confront the tensions of our networked personalities—our shadows, our masks, our shame.
-Dark Mofo
Curated by Caine Chennatt
Presented by Dark Mofo and Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania
https://darkmofo.net.au/program/interfacial-intimacies
