Muros suspendidos para Woolf:

No-lugar en “A Room of One’s Own: An Exhibition”

Bajo la curaduría de Osman Can Yerebakan, quien aborda “A Room of One’s
Own”, un ensayo de Virginia Woolf, desde un ángulo interdiscursivo, A Room of
One’s Own: An Exhibition atraviesa las ficciones del espacio, reuniendo el talento de
doce artistas. Expuesta en el Centro Cultural y Educativo Clemente Soto Vélez, la
exhibición fue un cuarto para una multitud de flujo dinámico en la que los
visitantes interactuaron con la envergadura que cada obra sugirió.

ORNA ACKERMAN
Pink Room, 2016

En Pink Room de Orna Ackerman, las cabezas de los bustos están abiertas,
revelando pensamientos fragmentados, citas, frases confusas que se movían de una
cabeza a la otra, o terminaban en el bolsillo de algún transeúnte. La fragmentación
y la memoria son esenciales en A Room of one’s own, donde las obras se convierten
en puntos de referencia, desafiando los órdenes lineales. La Galería Abrazo Interno
Gallery se convierte en sí misma en una ciudad que está rota en pedazos; un no-
lugar de signos e interacciones no tan privadas: “Favor no tocar”, “Favor tomar
una nota”.
The exhibition works as a mental geography of creativity for ‘take place/non-
place’, exposing diverse aesthetics to contemplate and interpret the mind. In the
words of the curator: “nestled in corners of our recollection are such memories
guiding us towards identities streaming from these footprints of the past.” It can
drive us to countless ideas to ponder on. I’m interested in how experiencing the
exhibition helps recognizing two fundamental activities of our mind and the cities:
to construct and destruct structures.

RYAN ROA SELIME OKUYAN

Plane Drawing #6, 2016 Ascent/Descent, 2016

Plane Drawing #6 and Ascent/Descent provide opacity to the strange similarity of

opposites. In the work of Ryan Roa, diagonal lines intersect in two planes, drawing
on the surface of the wall a network that is as elastic as it is tense. All lines deviate
from the x and y axes. Besides, Selime Okuyan’s work is a malleable bifacial
scaffold hanging by gravity, the Wall and semantics. Up or down drapes are optical
illusions of movement and instability. It matches other works in exhibition like:
Favia Souza’s Pyramid-Movements (white) and Floor drawing, or the wallpaper-column
Visnatura by Laura F. Gibellini.
In Masbanet Abu Shamat (Abu Shamat Soap Factory), Lana Abu-Shamat reinterprets
fragments of the past creating a handcrafted imaginative place of fragments.
Motion and consumption change along with the fragile and transitory stability of
places and subjects, of maps and human geographies. The soap stamp and the
picture on the wall are allegories of the material and process resumed in the tower,
but also as metaphor of procedures for dis-continuity.
Cindy Jiménez-Vera, Puerto Rican poet, says that we all have itinerant and
permanent exhibitions in our homes, which sometimes reveal memories from the
past or things we hold on for visitors. To retrieve the fragments of ourselves in a
mental space of emptiness; art seems to be an aesthetic way to reformulate.
Memory resides in portraits and self-portraits if we consider the artwork of Joana
Kohen, or, in portraits of the emptiness if we consider Sinan Tuncay’s Retrieval.

Installation View of LEVAN MINDIASHVILI

A Room of One’s Own: An Exhibition from Unintended Archeology Series, 2015

Fragments from Unintended Archeology of UnPlace series, Untitled No. 1 and Untitled
No. 9 of Levan Mindiashvili are walls suspended on walls, bringing to mind
unfinished structures, subway stations, place of no one. The mental dimensions
I’m illustrating are made of suspended walls with which the artist can be
independent but not ignorant to social hindrance against diverse sexualities and
ethnicities. The room is open for visitors as a non-place we once own.
In interview, Osman Can Yerebekan explains more about how the installation
artworks interact with Woolf’s essay:
As the curator, what premises of Virginia Woolf's essay A room of one's own you excel?
I am always interested in the intersection of art and literature, and how they
can inspire each other in terms of depicting the human condition in indirect
yet potent ways. Woolf’s argument about something tangible, which a room
for each woman, transforms in this exhibition in a metaphorical tone. I
wanted to translate what she urged for women’s intellectual and physical
liberation into a broader dialogue that spans identities that are marginalized
for various reasons, while still holding onto its feminist core.

How is diversity implicated in A room of one's own: an exhibition?

I am aware that her argument today comes out as elitist and classist in terms
of applying to a certain group of women, so I wanted to underline that
through the artworks as well as my essay in the exhibition catalog. In the
essay I make a reference to Alicia Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.
In that book, she scrutinizes Woolf’s premise and asks, “What are we to
make of Phillis Wheatley, a slave, who owned not even herself?”. So, if we
are talking about A Room of One’s Own today, we have to consider it on a
broader platform and discuss its deficiencies as well as its tremendous
impact.

By Gaddiel Francisco Ruiz-Rivera

Photos are by Azmi Mert Erdem