Emre & Dario by Ayse Erkmen – curation of solo show at GROTTO
January 31 – March 15 2025
March 5, 18:00 at Hansabibliothek: Talk between Ayse Erkmen and Yagmur Ruzgar
A conversation between two Istanbul-born artists (one in 1990, one in 1949) about friendship, everyday life, being a woman, being neighbors, leaving Istanbul, and living in Berlin. The conversation will be held in Turkish, their mother tongue, which will spark the topic of living and working in two foreign languages. It promises to feel like a daily conversation, similar to the ones they often share on a taxi ride or in a cafe.
Find the recorded conversation on YouTube.
→ Press
Mousse
Berliner Morgenpost (online & print)
CeeCee
Contemporary Art Library
Text by Liberty Adrien
A piece of furniture sliding across a room, a plate falling from a table and shattering, hollow knocks breaking the silence—these uncanny happenings are thought to be manifestations of a poltergeist. Both unsettling and familiar, this enigmatic figure has its roots in German folklore, with its name composed of Poltern — to bang, crash, or make noise—and Geist — spirit or ghost. At times terrifying and at others comical, it seeks to navigate its existence among the living. Thus, more than a mere disruptive character, the poltergeist stands as a metaphor in popular culture for the pervasive fears of “otherness” and the “unknown”, which continue to shape the collective imagination.
This ghostly reference appeared in a brief description of Ayşe Erkmen’s artistic practice: “In the manner of a ‘poltergeist,’” it reads, “she juxtaposes, displaces, re-engineers, and invades a space” (Fulya Erdemci). For more than five decades, Erkmen (b. 1949, Istanbul, Turkey) has developed a body of work that resists easy categorization. Spanning mediums, scales, and temporalities, her practice is deeply rooted in the subtleties of the places and contexts where her pieces take shape. Often disrupting the ordinary through poetic gestures, her work seamlessly blends humor and critique, delving into recurring themes such as presence and absence, dislocation and adaptation, and belonging and estrangement.
Erkmen’s work Emre & Dario (1998), on view at GROTTO, was originally conceived for the exhibition Iskorpit, held at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 1998. The 12-minute color video with sound features the artist’s son, Emre, dancing to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) — a 1954 song made famous by Izmir-born, Paris-based Jewish-Turkish-Mexican singer Darío Moreno (1921–1968). Against a stark white backdrop, Emre, dressed in a 90s outfit of a black t-shirt and jeans, moves with contagious joy to the upbeat melody and catchy refrain of the song, played on a continuous loop.
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it’s Turkish delight on a moonlit night
A summer hit in both France and Turkey, Moreno’s cover — a French adaptation of an eponymous English song — romanticizes Istanbul’s transformation from Constantinople, portraying the city as an exoticized backdrop for a fictional love story steeped in Western fantasies and orientalist tropes. In Erkmen’s work, the song’s looping refrain grows increasingly insistent, gradually unraveling a subtle tension between lightness and complexity. The video concludes with Emre, his movements slowing as fatigue sets in, stepping out of the frame and leaving behind only the white backdrop for the viewer’s gaze.
Stripped to its essence — a son, a song, and a blank space — Emre & Dario engages with the layered complexities of displacement and cultural belonging. Created during a period of socio-political upheaval in both Turkey and Germany, where reunification brought profound social transformations amidst a climate of rising xenophobia, the work presents the notion of identity not as a fixed but fluid construct, shaped by individual and collective experience, intergenerational dialogue, and geographic and cultural contexts. Much like a poltergeist, the work embeds itself in the viewer's mind with its haunting earworm melody and unresolved questions.
Ayse Erkmen lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul. Erkmen graduated from the Department of Sculpture, Mimar Sinan University in 1977. In 1993, she participated in the DAAD International Artist Residency Programme in Berlin. Erkmen worked as the Arnold Bode Professor at Kassel Art Academy in 1998–1999, as lecturer at Frankfurt Städelschule in 2000–2007 and at Münster Kunstakademie in 2008–2016. Among the international exhibitions Erkmen has participated in are the 2nd, 3rd and 13th Istanbul Biennial; the Turkish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; Manifesta 1, Shanghai, Berlin, Gwangju, Sharjah, Limerick, Scape, Ichihara, Aicihi biennials; and the Folkestone and Echigo-Tsumari triennials. Her recent shows include scrolling, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Germany (2021); Beethoven Bewegt, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; EINS, ZWEI, DREI, Kunsthalle Vogelmann, Heilbronn, Germany (2020); Whitish, Arter, Istanbul (2019); Kıpraşım Ripple, Dirimart, Istanbul (2017); A, SMAK, Ghent (2016); Une histoire, art, architecture et design, des années 80 à aujourd’hui, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014); Ayşe Erkmen: Intervals, Barbican Center, London (2013). Erkmen participated in the Skulptur Projekte Münster 2017 with a project titled On Water and in the first edition of the Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019 with her project three of four. In 2020, she is granted the prestigious triennial Ernst Franz Vogelmann Sculpture Award, the first woman artist receiving it.