Retrospective exhibition focuses on representation of women in art

İnci Eviner's "Who's inside you?" retrospective exhibition consisting of paintings, drawings, videos, sculptures and photography has opened its doors last week at Istanbul Modern. Attending the introduction meeting at Istanbul Modern, Eviner said the exhibition was a thrill all by itself. "All the things I thought I could never do came to light all of a sudden, facing me. The exhibition is the practice of getting away from yourself as an artist. Therefore, it has suddenly embraced a public light exiting from being mine. My point of view toward my own work has also changed," noted Eviner.


Weaving together the violence at the heart of the beautiful, the potential of the repressed and unique creativity of the subconscious, İnci Eviner creates contemporary works that give the impression of being as timeless as they are contemporary.

Stating that she realized she should not go with a classic exhibition, Eviner said: "We have advanced chapter by chapter so far with the texts I wrote for my exhibitions, and we made a design for the area to be perceived as a sole picture as soon as you step in."

İnci Eviner Retrospective exhibition brings together the creation process of the artist extending from the 1980s to present. The exhibition displays the development and transformation of Eviner's understanding of rich expression ranging from drawing to painting, from video to installation, from photographs to sculpture. It presents Eviner's artistic accumulation to visitors with a different fiction placing the past and present within each other and including the area into the exhibition rather than following a chronological pattern.



Drawing constitutes the center of Eviner's works. Describing the origin of her practice as expressions she creates with lines on paper, the artist creates her artistic approach by enriching it more every time by wandering within an infinite visual language ranging from art historian allegories, iconography, illustrations and mythologies to contemporary ideograms and pictograms. Weaving together the violence at the heart of the beautiful, the potential of the repressed and unique creativity of the subconscious she creates contemporary works that give the impression of being as timeless as they are contemporary.

The pioneering artist taking over an effective role in Turkish contemporary art's modern transformation, opens a free expression area for herself on different subjects related to womanhood under political and socio-cultural circumstances, gender and politics of identity. Investigating reflections of discursive and unconscious processes affecting us since our childhood on the identity of woman, the artists defines womanhood as an area of indefinite imagination that does not fit in only one image. Starting from the gestures within daily life, Eviner not only questions but also challenge the modes of representation seen suitable for women and the bans endanger these representations.

İnci Eviner is undoubtedly one of her generation's most creative and contemporary artists in terms of the diversity of interest and research fields. Nearly 40-year-old inventory collected in the exhibition displays the rich and profound bond she has established both with herself and with integrity of the unconscious, culture, history, nature and art that create humanity. Born in Ankara in 1956, Eviner currently works and lives in Istanbul.

The exhibition's curator and Istanbul Modern's director Levent Çalıkoğlu stressed the fact that the exhibition dated back to a 40-year accumulation and pointed out the common structure and context of the works on display.

Stating that people could witness the traces of the history of art in the exhibition as well, Çalıkoğlu said: "We will see how the history of art was transformed, its relation with modern language, how the artist used the history of art from her academic training to the present and how she put it in her own art and transforming it. There is an amazing potential in the history of art. There are narrations, allegories and endless references. Therefore, İnci sees way too profoundly in each one of them how they can be used as an academic and how a relation with modern politics can be established."

The exhibition will stay open until Oct. 23.