İnci Eviner: We, Elsewhere

“They would not let us in, and so we rose, indignant, from below. But we found we had left behind, all the way down there, fragments from an arm, a leg, another half, a flank. There lies the reason for the cripple’s limp in our step, the shiver in our crawl, the hiccough in our speech, the stutter in our coupling.” Orhan Pamuk, from the book of We, Elsewhere, 2019

We, Elsewhere, a new work by İnci Eviner is presented in the Pavilion of Turkey at the 58th Venice Biennale to be held from May 11 through November 24, 2019. Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by Fiat, the Pavilion of Turkey is located at Sale d’Armi in Arsenale, one of the main exhibition venues of the Venice Biennale.

Designed as an architectural installation, We, Elsewhere is an investigation into the spaces that we create and are created for us as a result of collective displacements and how subjects who find themselves in these spaces react and interact with one another. Reconfigured objects and characters crafted by Eviner evoke the sense of a search for the missing, the erased and that which is elsewhere. 

The space uses different levels of aural and visual elements such as drawing, moving image, sculpture, sound and performance, interacting with one another in order to insinuate the workings of a device. The visitors are invited to walk along ramps, courtyards and edges of the space, which displays permeability, allowing views through cuts and cracks in the walls. Together, the characters, the space and the paths tell a story akin to Hannah Arendt’s narrative of struggles in “We Refugees.”

İnci Eviner explains: “It seems as if some people are in search of their minds, their repressed emotions and gestures, their unfinished stories scattered among the layers of this stage split in half, thinking that only by collecting these they will shape themselves as a subject. As all this happens, I try to both include and exclude myself from these events in order to bear witness. The responsibility of being a witness requires the questioning of being us.”

Space Occupiers
During the preview days of the biennale, Pavilion of Turkey hosted Space Occupiers, live performances by Canan Yücel Pekiçten and Melih Kıraç, the performers of We, Elsewhere. 

We, Elsewhere team
We, Elsewhere has been created by a team of contributors. Curator Zeynep Öz has contributed to the idea formation and preparation process, as well as the book of We, Elsewhere. The architectural design of the project was created by Birge Yıldırım Okta and Gürkan Okta, whereas the sound design is by Tolga Tüzün. Sequences from the video, which surround the viewer in a continuous appearance and disappearance effect on the walls of the structure, include the performance artists Canan Yücel Pekiçten, Melih Kıraç and Gülden Arsal Yavuz. Director of photography of the video is Aydın Sarıoğlu and the video post-production team includes Cem Gökçimen and Cem Perin.

The exhibition’s visual identity and the book are designed by Okay Karadayılar and Ali Taptık (ONAGÖRE). The book features texts by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, curator Zeynep Öz, and a conversation piece between İnci Eviner and Istanbul Biennial and İKSV’s Contemporary Art Projects Director Bige Örer. The book is available in a bilingual format—English and Turkish—at the biennale bookstore and will be distributed by Yapı Kredi Publications in selected bookstores in Turkey.

For high-resolution images please click.

For videos please click.

For media inquiries:
İKSV Media Relations: media [​at​] iksv.org
Pickles PR: Maria Cristina Giusti / cristina [​at​] picklespr.com / T +39 339 8090604 & Zeynep Seyhun / zeynep [​at​] picklespr.com / T +39 349 0034359