Studio-X Istanbul hosts Tayfun Serttaş's exhibition ‘Cemetery of Architects’ and the launch of his book ‘Trilogy of the Deserted City’.
As its second project during January 31st - March 28th, 2014, Studio-X hosts Tayfun Serttaş's exhibition, "Cemetery of Architects" in which the artist examines the relationship between the physical identity of urban space and the individual through an archive. Studio-X, an initiative of Columbia University, is founded in Istanbul in December 2013 with leading support from Borusan Holding. The exhibition, eponymous with an installation by the artist, brings together works that problematize the impact of historic interruptions on Istanbul's cultural map. In "Trilogy of the Deserted City", to be launched in parallel to the opening, the artist shares with the viewers the background of three different projects in which the same historic problem is attempted to be resolved through various media and methodologies. "Cemetery of Architects" exhibition is supported by a six-week public programming under the heading "half-century before, half-century after".
Trilogy of the Deserted City is an experiment dedicated to problematize the consequences of the loss of its population and the periodic emigrations from Istanbul—one of the most crowded cities in the world—as much as the internal migration that it received, on its cultural memory.
The aim is not to be relieved of a sense of guilt evoked by the city through putting pieces of unorganized data next to each other. It is to call upon the souls that have remained hanging in its ominous history, disabling the unconscious, confronting the abnormalities, revealing the repressed through skepticism.
In the three consecutive layers of fake investigation and misdirection, the "desertedness" that is sought, followed, watched, evidenced, researched, interrogated is internalized. Thus the exaggerated urban metaphor becomes a game through a one-person search against the city and collective memory by the individual.1
- 1. Source: http://events.gsapp.org/event/mimarlar-mezarlığı-cemetery-of-architects