THEY SHALL EITHER HOPE OR FEAR #3, 2023

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​How can we think of art history -and of course history at large- differently, without either exaggerating the impact of material structure or inflating the rote learning of art discourse? How can we interrogate completed artworks and the constellation of forces that shape them—artists, institutions, markets, materials, environments—and make space for other possibilities, particularly under conditions of self-censorship, censorship, political and social pressure, and mass death (for instance, earthquakes that become disastorous), in which such possibilities were never realized or were actively foreclosed?

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Fiction, fantasy, fabrication, and myth can help us imagine new ways of living and thinking, despite the heavy pressure of material, social, and institutional realities, including the art world itself. Since 2016, my work has drawn on this vital force of fiction, especially at a time when both Turkey and the art world have become more closed, cautious, conservative, and passive.

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The video-narrative THEY SHALL EITHER HOPE OR FEAR #3 is based on an exhibition I visited in 2008. The exhibition was created by a group of artists inspired by Selçuk Parsadan, a notorious con artist from the 1990s. They described him as “an artist whose performances had real, material effects in the real world.” Parsadan was a master of telephone fraud, known among fraudsters as “Helloism,” and—like many con artists—a skilled storyteller.

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Starting from this reference, the work explores the potential of storytelling. It also reflects on ethical and aesthetic choices shaped by what has been lost, ignored, or left unrealised. Instead of treating these losses as something that could easily be replaced, I chose not to materialise them as physical artworks or exhibitions. Rather than producing objects, I presented a witness narrative of uncertain authenticity.

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This narrative took place in an empty gallery, relying on words, gestures, and the ambiguous signals of sound. By working with absence instead of denying it, the piece opens up a set of artistic potentials—ways of turning our current condition of crisis into a source of energy rather than paralysis.