Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall: The house Alice built

Starting from their reflection on Modernism and the Bauhaus culture, the artists and architects Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall show a series of works and speculative research on feminist spatial utopias. Set up on both floors of the gallery their installation provides a methodological activation of emancipatory ideas and practices to reshape our shared spaces.

Modernism has long been questioned for what Walter Benjamin called the destructive character; for those utopian aspirations of total reduction and the tabula rasa regarded as bound up with paternalistic, colonial, and totalitarian attitudes. Alternative approaches to this Modernism constitute the topic of the research-based work The house Alice built. With it Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall explore utopian projects that, informed by feminist theories and practices, have reimagined modern (domestic) space. They collect and develop speculations on houses and scenes that subtract from a given set of rooms, actors, and functions, without destroying them completely: these speculations remove the kitchen from the apartment, Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, the state from democracy. Following a method of subtraction (n-1), they eliminate elements that separate social spheres. The n-1 drafts formulate not Modernist major projects but concepts of minor operations that however allow for new spatial connections and relations. In that they provide the ground on which we might evolve more open social, political, and aesthetic forms of living together.

Curated by T. Melih Görgün.

Based in Berlin, Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall have been working as a collective since 2007. In their research-based practice they reflect and produce space through various media: architectures, exhibitions, installations, scenographies, as well as (video-)texts, concepts, and publications. Their projects are explorations of particular past, present and future contexts and aim at negotiating the evolving relationship between architecture, art, and the political. 
They exhibit and publish internationally, among other venues at the Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Venice Biennale, Vancouver Art Gallery, Istanbul Design Biennial, Art Center Los Angeles, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Storefront for Art and Architecture New York, Sinop Biennial, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, HKW Berlin, New Museum New York, and other venues; in e-flux journal, Volume Magazine, Perspecta, The Gradient: Walker Art Center, AArchitecture, Deutschlandfunk, and other online and offline publications. 
They are the authors of a book on the speculative character of modern architecture (How Architecture Learned to Speculate) and the editors of Junk Jet, an independent magazine on architecture, art, and media. http://m-a-u-s-e-r.net

Riverrun was founded in 2017 by Norgunk Publishing House as an exhibition and event venue. It is located on Boğazkesen street in Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. The exhibitions hold in the space are called “Bunker Exhibitions.” The series started with Sarkis’ solo exhibition Yellow Punctum, followed by Badminton on Meadow by Ayşe Erkmen and Bernard Frize, The Art of Garden Care by Selim Birsel, Every wall a door by Mona Hatoum, Large Meadow 2018 Exhibitions, and The Stelyanos Hrisopulos by Antonio Cosentino.
Riverrun aims to continue its program with the participation of both national and international contemporary artists. The space also serves as an event venue for talks regarding multidisciplinary projects, book launches, etc. http://riverrunistanbul.org

​Supported by Goethe-Institut Istanbul.