curated by Brigitte Kölle

The Arthur Boskamp Foundation presents a comprehensive solo show of the artist Nevin Aladağ. Born in Turkey in 1972, the artist now lives and works in Berlin and has received international recognition for her performances, sound and video works, photography and installations in recent years. Although Nevin Aladağ’s body of work is exceptionally diverse, some leitmotifs can be distinguished, such as the identity question (of people as well as places), self-perception and the perception of others, role attributions and identity models.

One medium that finds frequent and varied use in Nevin Aladağ’s work is sound. “Hochsaison/High Season” is a pure sound piece as well as the title piece of the exhibition. The modern hall – the largest exhibition space at the Arthur Boskamp Foundation – is left radically empty and becomes a place in the viewer’s imagination solely through the sounds and noises of a public swimming pool. We hear the happy cries of children, the splashing eruptions of bodies hitting the water, the familiar murmur everyone knows from childhood that is the background noise at a public pool. There is nothing arbitrary about the chain of associations set in motion: Water, heatwave, summer, sweat, scent, exuberance, eroticism, lack of space, etc. Minimal means that work like triggers, capable of evoking powerful inner images.

The identities of places we perceive to be transitory, the meaning of temporality, the cultural coding of action and interaction are leitmotifs that traverse this exhibition, which brings together the artist’s older and more recent work.

Kind thanks to the Landeskulturverband (Regional Culture Association) Schleswig-Holstein e.V. for supporting this show.