Siver-gelatin prints, plaster, light reflective paint, wall-print, UV-print on black alu

Installation Views Artificial bloom/fluid archives @ SANATORIUM Gallery, Istanbul, 2019

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ARTIFACTS is my ongoing research project dealing with the idea of a future archeology towards the digital (self-)image. Digging into digital ruins, I create virtual caves of digital paintings. By manipulating and retouching photographs of classical female poses, I experiment with the idea of a musealisation of the pose and the transition into techno-feminist bodies.

Digitally retouched photographs are processed into analog negatives and presented as silver-gelatine prints which evoke the question of authenticity of bodies in digital photography. The transformation process of the original digital image lies in an exaggerated “touching” of the image file in photoshop which eventually leads to a bodily transformation – a virtual touch archive. Murals with light-reflective materials invite the viewer to use the flash mode camera of their smartphones, to explore the boundaries of physical vs. technological observation: the gaze of an apparatus.

The evolution of the hands point to a major focus in my approach: the transition of “handmade” objects, through the depiction of the human body on walls, paper etc. to the contemporary use of the hand as a tool for touching images on near-body devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Alongside this I extend the 2-dimensional works with a selection of small handmade head sculptures embedded in light reflective material as a reference to the virtual mind, the face culture and the (digital) self-staged image culture which is strongly related to the formation of the “face”.