Demet Güral
The exhibition “Lines of Site/Kazı İzleri”, which we plan to hold in February 2022 in Istanbul, will be a contemparary art event that brings together artworks by artists from different countries working with different methods and materials.
Artists will produce works in painting, video, sculpture, photography, installation and other art forms within the scope of contemporary art practice. What these works have in common will be the sedentary life of the Neolithic period in Aşıklı Höyük as well as the inspirations and emotional impression reflections from today’s excavation findings.
This exhibition, which will be the most important event of the “Art and Archaeology” project, led by the Friends of Aşıklı Society and funded under European Union’s Grant Scheme for Common Cultural Heritage: Preservation and Dialogue between Türkiye and the EU-II (CCH-II) program, will tour in Barcelona, Dundee and possibly London as a physical or virtual exhibition after Istanbul.
The 13 artists who confirmed that they would participate in the exhibition, visited Aşıklı Höyük in recent years, spent time with the archaeological team at the excavation site, and made observations. However, during the project period and the art work production phase, it will be very important for artists to spend more time with archaeologists, to produce ideas, both through online meetings and by visiting Aşıklı again to enhance “intercultural dialogue”, which is the main goal of the project. These meetings are aimed at bringing the disciplines of archaeology and art together, and relatedly aimed at realization of an interdisciplinary presentation with areas such as anthropology, zoology and botany.
We know that the artists who have visited Aşıklı until now are extremely impressed by the authentic configuration of the site and have started to write the story of Aşıklı in their own art forms. Now it’s time to produce and display “a timeless museum” by observing images of Aşıklı and surroundings unchanged for thousands of years and 10,500 years old Aşıklı Höyük.
