Damla Sarı’s first solo exhibition, Previously Asked Questions of The Last 10 Years, will be on view at Art On Pera from September 10 to October 11. Curated by İlayda Abdik, the exhibition brought together photography, video, installation, and kinetic works. The selection is conceptually divided into two: the artist as a body trapped within the constraints of two dimensions, and spirit forms that inhabit the bodies of objects whose silence the artist has broken.
In her practice, Sarı examines perceptions of objects through psychoanalytic readings to approach reality. She bases her work on observations of extroverted characters who are always ready to reveal their psychological states and the impressions their behaviors leave on her. From this foundation, she creates kinetic art, new media, and installation works. At times, she pursues the spirit of a person through an encountered object; other times, she attempts to access the owner’s spirit through an object she has found. By analyzing people through their objects, Sarı produces spiritual prototypes and, with a satirical approach, explores the construction of the future based on the individual’s past.
Objects encounter the artist in a second-hand shop, on the street, or in a dream. She gives them the ability to tell their own stories, assume characters, and play. She mobilizes technical possibilities to endow objects with qualities beyond their functional value. Through paradoxical or polysemous titles, she also places words at the service of the objects in her work.
The backbone of the exhibition can be understood through the concepts of “the gaze of the object” and “seeing as object.” In Lacanian psychoanalysis, objects carry gaze and gaze itself can be objectified independently of the eye. An object becomes an image for a subject positioned at a certain viewpoint, but the subject is also captured by the object’s gaze. Even before the subject looks, they have already been seen. The objects Sarı uses see, watch, and follow; they are the very bodies of gaze that have escaped the eye. The subject feels this gaze on their body. To protect themselves from the gaze, the subject develops two opposing strategies: either covering or curtain- ing themselves, or undressing to fully occupy the pupil of the eye.