Double, 2019
Merve Ünsal, Double, 2019. Two cement sculptures, dimensions variable. Installation view from Double at Kıraathane, Istanbul, March 2019.
Merve Ünsal, Double, 2019. Two cement sculptures, dimensions variable. Installation view from Double at Kıraathane, Istanbul, March 2019.
Merve Ünsal, Double, 2019. Two cement sculptures, dimensions variable. Installation view from Double at Kıraathane, Istanbul, March 2019.
Merve Ünsal, Double, 2019. Two cement sculptures, dimensions variable. Installation view from Double at Kıraathane, Istanbul, March 2019.
Invited to a one-day pop-up exhibition at the Istanbul Literature House, I used the brevity of the exhibition slot as a departure point. Located in a historic building, the Literature House has bay windows, which, in the Ottoman context, were used as semi-private spaces that women could use to see more of the world. The two cement sculptures are based on drawings of the light coming in from the bay window at two different points of the day—a physically impossible co-existence, made permanent through the materiality of cement.
I imagined the installation being embedded in the letter “o” that is missing from the Turkish [duble] of double, thinking about representation as a mode of translation and displacement.
Photos by Rıdvan Bayrakoğlu.
