PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITION
INVISIBLE
22.01.-27.03.2022
rezzan gümgüm
Galeri Vitrin-Ankara
organized and supported by Goethe Institut Ankara
photo: Erhan Muratoğlu
In her site-specific performance, originating from personal and social experiences, Rezzan Gümgüm explores the concept of “invisibility” by means of various objects. This performance, which takes place in a shopwindow (vitrin in Turkish) where the things that are chosen are intented to be seen, focuses on the relationship between the act of seeing and the body, as well as the impact of point-of-views’ on seeing and the interation between them. Invisibility might be descibed as not being seen or recognized, in despite of the fact that you really exits there. Yet, this description is not sufficent at all.
Recalling the fact that looking is a selective act, deductively it could be said that, we see the things we chose to look at. The phenomenon of “we are seen after we see” reminds John Berger’s endeavour to define the act of “to see / to be seen” and his words on someone’s struggle to describe “how you see everthing” through analogy or directly is synonymous to describe “how he/she sees everything”. Our thoughts or beliefs takes the greatest share in this phenomena. Thought and belief effects on how we see objects, people and events. Shop windows are for displaying and exhibiting. Transparent surface draws the viewer’s gaze inside, while it cuts and obstructs the physical touch. The tension that is generated by the inability to touch intensifies the gaze directed towards inside. Firstly the mind is dragged inside than the body follows running.
The tight link that exists between a shopwindow that is displaying the trendiest shoes, and another one with construction machines, or a bakery window, or Amsterdam’s Red Light District’s windows are the same link between any household tv screen and handheld device’s screen. Capitalism maintains its existence by forcing the majority to define its demands in strict limits.
So, how does a shopwindow (vitrin) that begins to obstruct, interrupt the gaze towards the inside, where the shown begins not to be shown operate?
Vitrine, means a glass showcase or cabinet especially for displaying fine wares or specimens, comes to English by way of the Old French word vitre, meaning “pane of glass”, which derived from Vitrum, the word for glass in Latin language. Vitreous (resembling glass), vitrify (to convert or become converted into glass or into a glassy substance by heat and fusion) are some other words derived from vitrine. Even, vitriol the word which on one hand means bitterly harsh, caustic criticism and on the other, the toxic materials of sulphate of copper, iron, or zinc, comes from the same origin.
Garbage collectors, beggars, women, lgbti+, immigrants, especially the immigrant women, the ones that are not in the dominant religious community are invisible, they are not wanted to be visible, in spite of the fact that they actually exist.
Gloriously glaring, silver and golden emergency blankets blinds the gaze in Rezzan’s performance. The gaze goes blind in the golden glitter of the blanket thrown on the immigrant survived from a sunken boat.
“Invisible” reminds us that we can embrace the natural relationship between our body and the world, moreover the possibilty of seeing the world and ourselves with brand new eyes. The ability to see from every possible angle becomes a reality and every gaze could unite in this depth. Therefore, the installation that forms up at the end of the performance gives us a temporal synthesis of all the perpectives and forms summoned at a single nowness that is provided by the movability of the body. It makes us to confront the front-lines that are hidden in our reflections of our silence and with our quotidian feelings, it reminds us the experiences of invisibilities. It invites to the game of holding the control of the visibile, the invisible and the one that is not wanted to be seen.
brochure of the exhibition.
photos from performance and installation.
