Collection in Focus: Banu Cennetoğlu

On December 12, the Walker Art Center will open Collection in Focus: Banu Cennetoğlu, featuring a major video work by the artist that encompasses media pulled from her cellphones, computers, and hard drives from June 10, 2006, through March 21, 2018. Comprised of more than 127 hours of video and still photographs that unfold chronologically, the piece reflects the artist’s life as well as the shifting global landscape. Presented for the first time since its acquisition, the video is accompanied by a binder of metadata that serves as a map of the installation.

Banu Cennetoğlu’s (Turkey, b. 1970) cross-disciplinary practice actively engages with the collection and circulation of data, images, and information. By magnifying these minutiae, she humanizes global geopolitical phenomena that may otherwise be reduced to numbers and figures. In 1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 · H O W B E I T · Guilty feet have got no rhythm · Keçiboynuzu · AS IS · MurMur · I measure every grief I meet · Taq u Raq · A piercing Comfort it affords · Stitch · Made in Fall · Yes. But. We had a golden heart. · One day soon I’m gonna tell the moon about the crying game (2018), Cennetoğlu considers the relationship between personal memory and historical narrative. HOWBEIT collates still and moving images from the artist’s entire visual archive, culminating in what she calls an “intro-spective.”

The earliest files in the piece chronicle the year prior to Cennetoğlu’s first dissemination of The List, an ongoing project by UNITED for Intercultural Action that documents the deaths of more than 60,620 migrants who have sought refuge in Europe since 1993. The final files mark the days leading up to Nowruz, the Persian New Year—also the production deadline for the artist’s first exhibition of the work. Throughout the video, political matters sit alongside mundane moments and ecstatic encounters. The conflation of Cennetoğlu’s professional and personal life creates a dynamic dialogue about politics, privilege, and lived experience.

Curatorial team: Laurel Rand-Lewis, Curatorial Fellow, Visual Arts