The exhibition’s title is derived from the initials of the Turkish words for Transience, Volatility, and Scent. Emphasizing that everything possesses its own unique scent, and highlighting the weight, lightness, volatility, and transience of aroma, the artist follows and conveys the objects and their accompanying scents. The focus is on nature and the natural.
Drawing from her own experience of migration, Urfalıoğlu equates concepts such as matter, ownership, permanence, and transience with scent, questioning their meaning. She underscores that the current trajectory—marked by a power struggle against roaring, groaning nature, disregard for boundaries and ethics, and objectification of living beings—has reached its limit, pointing to the urgent need for a new order.
Urfalıoğlu questions how species, genders, and cross-cultural alienation determine the hierarchy of needs, drawing attention to our responsibility within the consumption chain and our deliberate destruction of the ecosystem. She reminds us that human nature, despite being programmed for the present moment, often acts in opposition. Beyond merely pointing out resource consumption, destruction, pollution, and the collapse of natural life, she proposes an ideal form of living.
Against the toxic legacy of dominant consumer policies, which result in heaps of waste and irrecoverable transformation, she offers a futuristic vision. Working with felt, the artist transforms her works documented in videos and photographs into new forms in subsequent exhibitions. Felt—a timeless medium that dissolves in water and can be repeatedly shaped like clay—allows her to demonstrate its endless possibilities, from clothing to architecture, through her works.
Maçka Art Gallery hosts this ephemeral yet natural and enduring exhibition, where Ayşen Urfalıoğlu envisions a utopia in which, in the face of nature and death, we are all equal, coexisting without conflict, transforming into one another, and giving rise to new forms while integrating science and art.
March 28 – May 27, 2023