To view the videos, please click here and here.
Exploring the district of Kağıthane where she lives, Ünsal’s Outside Instead of Before takes the gentrification and construction of a riverbed zone and the secluded lives of those in the neighborhood as its point of departure. Ünsal looks from the limits of her apartment, also a studio, to what she can see outside the window and through her own eye. Looking out the window is a way of paying attention to the world. One can recognize a new place, which changes from the feminine domestic space to a transformed urban landscape all in one sweep of the eye. A critical element in the videos is the relationship between the the physical locations of the apartments and the built environment as well as their perspective to the larger framework of society. Ünsal works with the friction between the voiceover text and the images, a possible stand-in for the hostility of the domestic space. Just as it is never possible to show things as they are, how is a home constructed, by whom and for whom? The artist constructs a narrative of her new neighborhood from within her work and living space, tracing the boundaries of her specific representational realm. Ünsal’s use of the camera lens and the frequent introduction of a black screen between the changing angles become a method of mimicking the look, the feel, and the limits of the natural eye.
—excerpted from the wall text for The Universe Flickers at SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul, September 2018.
Videos by Emin Yu
merve ünsal 