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Fırat Engin’s “Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow” exhibition open on Wednesday, September 14th 2022 Maçka Art Gallery in collaboration with Merdiven Art Space
Either societal, cultural or political every kind of knowledge about the world consists of the rearrangements of the indicators, symbols and therefore basically of fictions. These fictions that determine the relationships between the seen and said, done and potential shape the ways in which we create, interpret and convey the knowledge. So art is interested in revealing the constructed knowledge from these fictions that are created with materials such as symbols, indicators, images and messages. Fırat Engin– an artist who frequently deals with the concepts of war, violence, politics, immigration and social justice in his practice – his installation titled ‘Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow’ in positionned as an expansive visual message, and a fictional ‘knowledge in Maçka Art Gallery’s space. This spatial fiction created by Engin consists of found materials, such as numerous military ammunition trunks and petroleum, grain and water installed in three of them.
“Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow” not only discusses militarism as an “ideology’ of the modern age, and does a critical reading through war, violence and military structures, but also presents observations and predictions on the effects this militarism fed by war, rage, politics of alienation fear, the language of hate and racism, has on ecology. Using military ammunition trunks as a metaphor to the militarist performance, global captalism and the political powers’ ideological tools, the artist is pointing out to the human crisis, economic catastrophes, and the oncoming deep impoverishment/deprivation from the past to today, and extending to the future with the petroleum, grain and water filled in the trunks. As Plato stated long before the beginning of civilization, only the dead see the end of the war, and war - causing massive human and ecological problems and suffering today - only causes catastrophes in the world. Looted and exploited today through all people, socities and geographies, nature as a resources seems to have already passed the threshold of a big crisis.