Yasemin Özcan’s solo exhibition Wet Floor brings together the artist’s existing works with new pieces she created especially for this context. The exhibition curated by Eda Berkmen will be on view between 19 September 2024 and 6 April 2025 at Arter’s entrance floor gallery.
Yasemin Özcan’s solo exhibition Wet Floor explores the themes of intergenerational transmission, migration, and self-construction by delving into the complex relations between human beings and earth, language and remembrance, and autobiography and fiction. Soil permeates the exhibition, serving both as a basic construction material, and a metaphor for cultural transmission. The works highlight the diverse ways clay is used and circulated, while drawing parallels between the transformation and movement of such materials, and the evolution of human constructs like language, identity, and relationships. Transforming everyday images and objects through subtle interventions, the artist draws upon the Alevi traditions passed down from her family to reveal different ways of experiencing gratitude, mourning loss, leaving a mark, and embracing nature’s cyclical processes.
The phrase “wet floor”, which serves as the title for both the exhibition and the newly created installation within it, is derived from an expression the artist frequently heard from real estate agents while searching for a new home. Typically used to describe “wet areas” which are in constant contact with water, such as kitchens and bathrooms, this expression also evokes precarious and insecure areas. Offering an introspective and humorous perspective on concepts such as lineage, transmission, memory, urbanisation and modernisation through fictional narratives, the exhibition Wet Floor explores the possibilities of accepting fragility and nurturing hope.
Press release from Arter
Image: Yasemin Özcan. Installation view of Wet Floor at Arter, Istanbul. 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Arter
