Müge Yılmaz @accesstotimeandspace - Tumblr Blog

Entrophy, 2011

www.mugeyilmaz.com

A Brief History of Time II, 2014

Rijksakademie Open, Amsterdam

Chamadorea Elegans, Ravenea, Chrysalidocarpus Lutescens, Bamboo, Pachira AquaIca, Phoenix Roebelenii, Dracanea Marginata, Yucca.

Photo: Gert Jan van Rooij

Photos by Serkan Taycan

Proto5533 presents Living/Matter: In and Through with works by Essi Kausalainen and Müge Yılmaz curated by Kevser Güler, which explores the distinct attitudes towards nature and living beings. Together with the technological interventions upon living matter and the global capitalism’s seeing the ‘living being’ as its main capital, the discussions on nature, life and future of living beings have been proliferating in the last couple of decades. The scientific proposal, made to date the new geological era the Anthropocene describing human’s becoming principal agents effecting all life on this planet, also the facts about the ecological crisis and the climate change are calling for rethinking human being’s position and complex web of relationships on earth. Müge Yılmaz’s The Water, the Soil, the Jungle, 2016, is a vitrine installation incorporating the ghillie suits. The ghillie suits are camouflage clothing, mostly used by the nature photographers and bird observers, which have also been used by hunters. Through the installation, Müge refers to human beings’ two particular manners of approaching to nature; the tendencies of the subjectification of the nature that redefines nature as an actant, or the naturalization of the subject which underlines that nature always already embraces each and every living being including human. It also has connotations relating to the myths and stories in which nature is depicted as a talking or acting subject; and at the same time to the current discourses of the environmentalists, which may be summarized with the sentence “We are nature defending itself”. Essi Kausalainen’s Botanic, 2011 including performative videos and living plants installation explores the possibilities of communication through plants’ ways of being. She anticipates the complex interaction and the dialogue between human beings and plants. By building inter-species companionships and by approaching plants as co-performers she aims to escape the anthropocentric, hierarchical and linear ways of thinking and performing. She has realized the videos in a botanic garden in collaboration with the plants there and in the exhibition space she invites new plants to continue the performance and interact with the visitors during the exhibition period. In reference to the continuum of nature-culture and human-nonhuman, the dialogue of Botanic, 2011 andThe Water, the Soil, the Jungle, 2016, explores new ways of engagement, interaction and possibilities as well as limits of human community. Living/Matter: In and Through intends to open conversations about possible future vocabularies and imaginaries of the post-human subjectivities and the relationship to nonhuman others, to the animate and inanimate beings.

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