Untitled, 2019
Partially reflected mirror, artist’s portrait, wood, black fabric
180 x 152 x 180 cm
I have always been trying to communicate.
As an artist, having others gaze at your work makes you vulnerable. I used to struggle with the frustration of viewers formulating the “wrong” interpretations of my work. Later, I realized that these interpretations are simply readings that don’t follow the path that I thought my work, and I, would take—and they are in fact valuable. Untitled is an installation that provides different readings for every individual experience; no viewer sees an image the same, and every perception of the work is ultimately unique. If viewers produce “wrong” interpretations, let them be, let everyone’s perception be different.
The existence of art relies upon the reading of the viewer. The reading is not simply deciphering the work, but also fertilizing the work. Art is only art when you believe in its genie (magic). Deriving from the concept of the death of the author, my works aim to provoke dialogue between the artist and the viewer in terms of the subject position.
In the manifesto Of Other Spaces: Utopias And Heterotopias, Michel Foucault brought up 6 principles of the heterotopia. In the third one, he claimed that the heterotopia is a place that “is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several space, several sites that are in themselves incompatible. He mentioned that the mirror is an example of heterotopia for it creates a space that is not existing but I could only perceive the self-image from the virtual world which makes the space that I occupied both absolutely real and at the same time, absolutely unreal. I have practiced in my art work in order to create nonverbal platform for me and the spectator to communicate. Therefore, I instinctively connect the idea of mirror being a multidimensional space to my art practice.
The mirror is interesting in a way that it reflects honestly. Unlike an artwork, mirror never show any artist’s hand. When viewer looks at it, it reflects whatever is projected on it – the image of the viewer. For this work, I mainly focus on how to make a literally space where the encounter of the viewer and artist happens.