The imagery of Nilbar Güreş is a summation of narrative-driven references that delve into both biographical and collective memory. Accompanied by narratives intertwined with concepts such as identity, belonging, gender discrimination, inequality, and migration, she presents her recent works—shaped by symbolic objects and images—at the Pavilion of Turkey at the Venice Biennale under the title A Kiss on the Eyes / Gözlerinizden Öperim. (1)

 

In the exhibition, the images stacked within the artist’s line of sight reshape themselves as liberated signifiers in connection with collective memory, forming an alienated realm of meaning. It is evident that the independent flow of imagery occurring here corresponds to an ordinary yet authentic cultural psychic disposition. Indeed, the queer structure put forward by Güreş is an arrangement that encompasses fragile, sensitive, and dynamic discourses within a precarious space. Just as seen in Land (Diyar-Toprak), the monumental installation positioned at the center of the exhibition, which leans on a blurred structure of meaning… (2)

 

 

In this context, the body in Land—composed of tassels hanging from the trunk of a symbolic tree—is an experiment in creating an ambiguous space initiated through concepts like male domination and its counterparts. This peculiar formalization, which almost transforms into the construction of a psychic realm, is an installational organization of language built with various pieces of clothing, objects, dissident creatures, and natural forms. In accordance with a discourse of irrational incongruity, the power of this paradoxical imagery to represent memory through the juxtaposed queer entities is remarkably high. Furthermore, in Land, the relational power of dispersed layers of meaning within a hybrid structure already manifests itself through a humor-infused and multiple phantasmagoria. Nevertheless, Güreş’s intuition and the parodic objects of representation that sustain the connections of memory undergo a transformation akin to the contortion of a painful body or soul. Consequently, this esoteric formation, which runs counter to the ordinary flow of life, is an internal mise-en-scène where discordant propositions—derived from socio-political tensions and composed of concepts and words that constrict the present moment—interlock with one another.

 

Moving from the example of Land, the core element emphasized in A Kiss on the Eyes is, in a way, the sense of distance that emerges within a discourse of tenderness and intimacy… Moreover, through such informal descriptions arising from a neurotic deviation, there is an experience and a fantasy of creating a psychic space-island based on psychological premises. A vision encompassing the past is presented alongside a complex psychic topography. In this process, where a resistance based on intellectual deductions is also active, it is certain that alienated layers of meaning are constructed by leaning on fragile balances.

For this reason, A Kiss on the Eyes undoubtedly creates a phenomenon of multiple knotting that positions objects in an interstitial zone, encompassing certain coincidental gaps that disrupt meaning between social discourses and individuality. The case of Land, standing out as an entirely dissident event of language and formalization, confronts us in this context as an arrangement of a latent political stance, a fiction of transgression, and an effective vision of an alternative space (an other realm).