“Heavy Burden (Ağır Yük)” brings together six artists of the same generation, each exploring different artistic practices. The exhibition features recent works by Ahmet Çerkez, Alper İnce, Erman Özbaşaran, Evren Sungur, Olgu Ülkenciler, and Burcu Yağcıoğlu, spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, and video installation, addressing the burdens that artists shoulder in response to the demands and pressures of contemporary life.
The present moment is undoubtedly not the most terrifying in human history; rather, it is a time in which humanity watches, afflicted by a myth of doomed fate, lamenting a world rapidly deteriorating, and allowing sensitive effort to give way to mere observation. We live in an age where the core of the problem is avoided, skirted around, kept in the public eye superficially, and quickly forgotten. As a result, all priorities are postponed. How does the artist witness all this?
In a time when artistic practice is often pushed to the background and the dynamics outside the work exert subtle pressure on the artist, is it a “heavy burden” to insist on continuing to create and question? On one hand, works align with dominant aesthetic norms, approve a language alien to everyone except the age itself, avoid dissent, and, while attempting political statements, abandon artistic concerns, blending into power structures. On the other hand, works that resist conformity, whose language grows more rigorous and whose audience shrinks, are rapidly erased for refusing to please the eye.
Considering the challenges of visibility, exhibition, material valuation, and preservation, it is far from easy for an artist to lead a life focused solely on their own production, independent of these forces. Especially in a cultural environment constrained by political authority, does an artist have any choice but to investigate the roots of moral decay while continuing to create, without losing faith, succumbing to inertia, or despair?
Perhaps the “burden” lies in recognizing that, in an age where everyone readily believes a lie, insisting on speaking truthfully—despite being misunderstood, unheard, or silenced—and creating without a fixed, original foundation, carries the inevitable truth that not every work will bear significance.