Art On Istanbul presents Enis Malik Duran’s solo exhibition “Axis of the Ground” at Art On
Piyalepaşa between February 10 – March 2.
In this exhibition, Duran seeks to explore humanity’s quest for meaning through its
relationship with the earth. Axis of the Ground takes its title from the concept of “Axis
Mundi”—meaning “Axis of the World” in Latin—a notion that appears across many
cultures and geographies.
A recurring motif in Duran’s practice is the image of the pit, which he interprets as a
metaphor for culture and power drawn from traces of past civilizations. The pit becomes
an allegory for the voids that generate power structures, as well as for humanity’s desire
to assert divine dominion nourished by the earth’s resources. As Nazlı Pektaş notes in the
exhibition catalogue: “With the notion of ‘Axis of the Ground,’ Enis Malik Duran speaks
less of power itself and more of the traces left by it. Towers, temples, churches, mosques,
synagogues, mines, constructions—all erected by the hand of power—deepen the pit left
behind by any conceivable source. Viewed from today’s perspective, the meaning of the
Axis of the Ground does not derive from the sanctity of God, from the sublime he created,
nor from the various structures built in his name. Its strength lies not in the
encompassing or divine as in the past, but rather from beneath the earth, from
nothingness, from darkness. At the same time, the pits deepened by humankind’s
manipulation of divine power become new Axis Mundi.”
For more than a decade, Duran has pursued a posthumanist perspective in his
explorations of the landscape motif. The media he employs—painting, drawing, sculpture
—become markers of his inquiry into the dissonance in humanity’s relationship with the
earth. The duality arising from humankind’s existence as an anomaly on the planet is
conceptualized in Axis of the Ground through the play of negative and positive, and
through inverted forms. By employing strategies of irony and manipulation, Duran’s
works position geography itself as a subject, aiming to interrogate the ontology that has
led to today’s age of anxiety through the traces of shared culture.
