Hafızayı Onarmak - Esra Carus
Michel Foucault, in his works, presented a singular perspective on history, and contrary to modernity’s promises of progress and social welfare, his reading of history problematized the events and phenomena that occurred within the process of progress. But how can the fragmented individual and time be made visible?
Esra Carus, while problematizing the isolated individual in modern capitalist society, shows that this is not a matter of fate; rather, modernity does not allow for a collective leap, and as a result, individuals become “a collection of singular solitudes clinging to the present.” The fragmentation of our age, which began especially in the 1990s and became even more visible during the COVID-19 period, not only highlights individual-society conflicts but also emerges from postmodernity’s strategy to destabilize the “subject.” Today, the modern subject writes their own story, and the Repairing Memory exhibition becomes a projection of shared fragmentation.
Focusing on Lacan’s assertion that “in the 20th century, the human psyche was irreparably fragmented,” Esra Carus demonstrates to the viewer that what they can recall or imagine are precisely their own fragments, and that these fragments are equal to the whole.
By using remnants of paper and porcelain from her previous works to create new works within a different wholeness, she asks: “Can we reach the original truth of the works these fragments belonged to? What kind of outcome can be derived from this debris of independent truths? Can memory be repaired?”
April 26, 2022 – June 4, 2022