I often consider the
concept of remembering
and forgetting
through the tidal movements of the mind
When there is low tide certain things
that are hidden reveal themselves
and we start to see them
and when there's a high tide
and it covers up
everything we forget them
This is also how cities are
underground
above ground
past and present
I'm Hera Büyüktaşcıyan
and I'm an artist based in Istanbul
I'm living at Heybeliada
one of the four Princes' Islands
It's a very utopic piece of land
that enables me
to have a sense of distance to the city
I commute around one and a half hours
Whilst you are in the boat
it becomes like a floating island
almost because I'm
not connected to anything
It gives me
a clarity of mind
I think you need to always
take a distance to certain things
in order to be able
to see the whole picture
Since I was a child
I always had this idea of understanding
a city by walking around it
All these hybrid forms
all these different timelines colliding
was something
quite exciting for me
It became a way of seeing life
and seeing things
I've been doing these long walks
in the old part of the town
and I was looking at these
converted architecture
from the Byzantine heritage
to the Ottoman
Different fragments
that were all translated
into different beings and forms
within time
And whilst
I was walking
I just came across these stone giants
which are the remnants
of the Theodosian Arch
Within the sixties
when the modern city was being built
there was this very xenophobic approach
towards the urban planning
especially in the old part of the town
that connects
with this power and architecture dynamic
Unwanted particles
are being swept away
at the corners of the roads
then becoming almost invisible forms
People sit on these pillars
almost sharing
a similar fate of being invisible
within the city with their existence
I started to look at this idea
of resistance to time
surface tension, petrification
and began
to work on the morphology
of these ruins
through piles of industrial carpets
And within time they became
these strata forms
that look like certain fragments
taken away from the terrain itself
The stone is a concrete material
but then the idea of softness
and fragility enters to the scene
This is one of my walking
routes that I often take whenever
I feel
to feel more grounded
and to remember somehow who I am
This is kind of the heart of the town
that imbibes
different timelines
and remnants of the act of erasure
as well as the effort
to recollect something
We see all these paper collectors
all these pieces of bricks
then fragments of older walls
the daily remains
and the ancient ruins share
something together
which I personally feel
that resonates
with my own personal being
Being in between both through identities
through languages
and being born in such a city
that is also a city of divisions
I see that in my work too
There are all these roads
of different divisions
that coexist together
like an act of resistance
Kalenderhane Mosque
formerly was a Byzantine Church named
Theotokos Kyriotissa
which is a very late period
Byzantine heritage
and when I look at this place
I somehow also connect
with the nature of the city
Istanbul
is one of these cities
that have gone through
so many transformations
that have affected the idea of belonging
and the idea of foundations
It's an earthquake zone
but also symbolically and historically
through political acts and power shifts
our own ground keeps shaking
all the time even today
It's not only about our remembrance
but also what
this ground remembers
because it has
witnessed so many people
passing through it
Some cities grow horizontally
Some cities grow vertically
Istanbul is a vertical city
because there's the idea
of the underground as well
One can see this
constant cyclic repetition of erasure
and then rewriting
which in my opinion
enables us to read the city
like a palimpsest
overall
Palimpsest comes from the ancient world
when we see these manuscripts
that a particular narrative is written
and then it's erased
and then
a new narrative is written over it
So there is this constant layering
that happens
It's an act of also resistance
because the surface
resists disappearance
My works often explore
the understanding of space
and memory through retracing absence
shaped by
ruptures of time
I work with wide range mediums
such as sculpture, drawing
stop motion film
and site-specific interventions
where all anchor
with one another
through the language of form
There's always a flow
and a matter of duality in my practice
where things of two
different nature coexists
Material memory
is also something that I often look at
It evokes certain
unseen or unspoken
elements and narratives
Our hand becomes an agent
that remembers through its connection
to surface and touch
I let certain memories flow
through my fingers
Lately I've been experimenting
with the material of carpets
as a space for drawing and mark-making
because it's a surface
that imbibes our traces
our recollections
and it consists
an idea of our own foundations
It is also a migratory object
in many migratory movements
We see people
having their carpets together with them
wherever they go
because it creates a sense of belonging
and a fluid ground of one’s own
When I was invited for
the Toronto Biennial
industrial carpets
that are often used in households
became an element
that connected
with the fragility of foundations
and the uncanniness
of the ground
When we look at the formation
of the modern
city of Toronto
we see these huge forest lands
that used to belong
to the First Nations, the indigenous land
that have been destroyed
The trees that have been cut
have been used
as pillars to carry the modern city
From an aerial view
the linearity of these maps
resonated with
the textile patterns
that were depicting landscapes
particularly Punjabi textiles
the Phulkari pattern
When you look at the linearity
of these compositions
it is a depiction of land
I wanted to create a forest
out of these carpets
It's almost like a musical score
in general of unspoken histories
that becoming
vocal through these patterns
the way they interact with one another
the way they stand in space
are as if they are physical beings
that have been petrified within time
I don't believe this notion of
ghost buildings
buildings are all alive
we just want to see them as ghosts
because it's easier to deal with them
like that
and to face with those harsh realities
that are there hidden in between the
stones or the surface
that surface tension that has
Cities are organisms
and no matter if you erase
there's always a particle left there
that waits for somebody to hear about it