Faces and Places

23 January - 9 March 2019 - Akbank Sanat

Cultural identities have never been fixed and defined; they have been created and shaped by designs of political futures, constructed and demolished by historical events, and have shown fluctuations through the displacement of cultural objects and the migration of populations; all of these seem to point to the impossibility of fixing identities within the flow of time, since identities are by nature in constant change. The only thing we can define is the present moment; and the present moment is grotesque and variable, and carries a burden brought by the ghosts of the past on its back. However, the present moment also has a certain beauty; it contains a vitality toward the formation of new judgements of justice, a search for new reconciliation, and contrary to superficial and demonstrative political tendencies, an acceptance and enthusiasm toward hybrid conditions that do not yet exist. Theo Eshetu presents two video installations in the exhibition; these are works titled Atlas Fractured (2017) and The Slave Ship (2015), accompanied by a series of portrait photographs.