26.04.–08.07.2007
Exhibition

Katja Eydel
Model ve Sembol - The Discovery of Turkey

Opening: April 25, 7pm

Artist Talk: Ausstellungsansichten
with Katja Eydel, May 2, 2007, 7 p.m.
Opening Speach: Verena Konrad, Art Historian

The focal point of this photographic project was the modernisation of Turkey since the founding of the republic in 1923 and its representation for example through architecture and officially organised celebrations. During the first half of the 20th Century, Turkey experienced a huge political and social upheaval. This can, on the one hand, be viewed as an model example of the founding of a modern state. On the other hand, it is worth looking into the history of Turkey – which is not just a country intersecting Europe and Asia – also in relation to the current conflicts with international problems. A historical spectrum is drawn from the fully visionary and utopian ideological basis, which the newly established republic was awarded under Atatürk and the present reality of its social construction.

Symbols and rituals were traced photographically in which their implicit potency on the macro level and their small, every day deferments are set in a relation to one another. It is a question of aesthetic production and choreography which have been and will be conceptualized and which will experience a pointedness in the picture language of the photographs. An underlying topic in the work was the idea of how politics and political want realised themselves in aesthetic forms – a question which Katja Eydel has already processed artistically using other connections concerning the former Yugoslavian republic or Berlin after the Fall of the Wall.
(Axel John Wieder)

Katja Eydel studied photography in Bielefeld and has taken part in exhibtions at home and abroad (incl. at the Nikolaj Center for Contemporary Art Copenhagen, Plattform Berlin, ICA London). In 2000, her „Belgrad Interviews. Yugoslawia after the Nato Attack and 15 Years of Nationalistic Populism“ were published (with Katja Diefenbach).