Turkey has often grabbed the headlines for the wrong reasons in Venice (or maybe it’s for the right ones). Two years ago, after a brutal police crackdown on protestors on Gezi Park, Istanbul, Turkish artists, curators and patrons took to the streets and squares of Venice in a solidarity march. Among those leading the demonstration was Ali Kazma, the artist who represented Turkey in 2013 with a video installation examining the nature of the human body and the notion of resistance. Also on the streets was curator Fulya Erdemci, who was overseeing the Istanbul Biennial’s plans to take over public spaces in the city (permission was denied following the protests); and Defne Ayas, curator of this year’s Turkish pavilion.
Rather than being directly confrontational this time, the Turkish pavilion attempts to rise above politics to contemplate the human condition on a global scale. Sarkis, the renowned Turkish-Armenian conceptual artist, inaugurates Turkey’s new pavilion at the Arsenale (the artist is also participating in the Pavilion of Armenia’s group exhibition to commemorate the Armenian genocide, controversially denied by the Turkish government).
In the Turkish pavilion, Sarkis creates an intensely, reflective space. The sheer size of the building with its magnificent vaulted ceiling and vast windows all lend themselves to Sarkis’ transformation of the pavilion into sanctuary. However, it is not as tranquil as it seems. Thirty-six stained-glass images run along the walls of the pavilion like windows of a church, illuminating the open borders between the personal and the political, life and death, and the mundane and the spectacular. They present a constellation of references to art history as well as the artist’s own biography and concerns, which are at once personal and collective.
At each end of the pavilion, rainbow sculptures made of neon seem to shoot from the floor like pulsating sound waves. A musical composition by Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi complements these works and reverberates throughout the space, giving life to many of Sarkis’s sculptures of glass and gold leaf.
The centre of the pavilion is divided by mirrored walls that add another dimension to the installation. Each features a series of patterns created by fingerprints (of seven children according to the exhibition notes). The mirrors will undoubtedly become the backdrop for many selfies; hopefully the these tiny, delicate fingerprints will linger in each photo, reminding visitors of the fragility of life and our responsibility towards the next generation.