Galeri Nev welcomes the opening of this season with İnci Eviner’s new work “Harem”, which will be on display from the 8th of September and on. The video was first shown this March as a part of the exhibition Istanbul Traversée in the Palais des Beaux Arts in Lille curated by Caroline Naphegyi. Galeri Nev is pleased to present the first showing of this work in Istanbul, with the courtesy of Vehbi Koç Foundation, in its Mısır Apartment venue on the 4th floor.
The artist takes inspiration from an engraving called the “Harem”, depicted in Antoine Ignace Melling’s “Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphore”, an album of engravings he created when visiting Istanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Selim the Third, towards the end of the 18th century.
İnci Eviner, who will also be having a solo show at Galeri Nev during 2009-2010 season, explains her work as such: “The Harem engraving in the album is the picture of a space in which weird figures of women roam. In contrast to the Orientalist tendencies of the period, there are no dramatic or seductive expressions. Women, illustrated with almost scientific precision, look as if they are thrown out of time. My interest in the Harem urges me to articulate these women beyond being objects of knowledge by giving them a voice and pushing them to reveal whatever they hide. I think that with some intervention, these women of the Harem, who have been imprisoned by the scientific talent of the artist, can reveal relationships of interest that are beneath the couple of reality and fantasy. The Orientalist discourse and the knowledge produced through it is a way of imagining the East. Today, women are crushed under the burden of both Western and Eastern discourses. Is it possible for a woman, who is at the core of this ideological rhetoric and social contract, to position herself as a subject? I believe in the necessity of pushing the limits of representation and unsettling iconography and myth. By oozing into the Harem, I want to put in motion the untamable and make these frozen images move to open up the possibility of resistance.”