Unlocked/Reconnected
01.06 - 22.08.2020
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Cihad Caner
/ The Only Good Nation Is Imagination, 2020, Site Specific Installation, Poster, Wallpaper, Graffiti, 250 x 300 cm
With ever-shifting political landscapes, existing forms of remembrance may be transformed or reinterpreted, or they may be altogether obliterated and new commemorative may emerge in their place. The work aims to constitute an exercise in memory and a testimony against forgetting. After all, remembering, as well as forgetting, is a highly politicized and social process.
Cihad Caner’s work refers to the (hi)story of the green marble platform behind the main podium of the United Nations' headquarters’ assembly hall in New York City. The work 'challenges' the memory of the marble slab, which bore witness to multiple incidents, the rise and fall of political leaders, and momentous thresholds of the past seventy years since it was brought from northern Italy in the 50's. What would happen if the green marble platform could talk, what would it say? To this end, Caner created an imaginary protagonist for a mocap CGI video with a non-linear narrative populated by fact-based incidents and fictional ones. In this case the sentence "The Only Good Nation Is Imagination" is written on a wall plastered poster depicting this imaginary protagonist.
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Unlocked/Reconnected is an initiative that brings together a wide range of 'houses for art': museums, institutes for presentation, galleries, artists' initiatives and corporate collections. The point of departure for Unlocked/Reconnected is the idea of solidarity, the will to reflect collectively on what home is. Our world must not become fragmented, fractured into enclosing walls: a consolidation of forces and locations, national and international, can in fact show us what the house/home can mean. As an initiative Unlocked/Reconnected stems from a sense that opening up the home, in the aftermath of the lockdown, will force us to reconsider our outlook on this. Unlocked/Reconnected underlines the importance of art and culture in this period of global crisis.
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