----------------------------- Eteläranta – 28100 Pori – Finland------------------------------------------- Tel +358-44-701 1080 ------------ taidemuseo@pori.fi – www.poriartmuseum.fi

Pori Art Museum/ exhibition space: Staircase05.04. - 05.06.2016

FATMA BUCAK

Suggested Place for You to See It, 2013

HD video, colour, sound

13 minutes 32 seconds

And then God Blessed Them, 2013

HD video, colour, sound

9 minutes 26 seconds

The two videos, Suggested place for you to see it and And then God Blessed Them, are a two-channel installation work set on on Tuz Gölü, the Salt Lake, in central Anatolia. The work is an exploration where the fixed contemporary definitions of religion, gender hierarchy and gender politics and the impact of it on the society are held question through a dialogue around theatricality, audience and medium.

Born in Iskenderun, on the Turkey-Syria border, Fatma Bucak studied Philosophy in Istanbul University and History of Art and Etching in Italy at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts, before completing an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London. Her works in performance, photography, sound, and video center on political identity, religious mythology, and landscape as a space of historical renegotiation.

The video works Suggested Place for You to See It - And then God Blessed Them has been produced with the support of ARTER, Istanbul. All copyrights owned by Fatma Bucak ©

----------------------------- Eteläranta – 28100 Pori – Finland------------------------------------------- Tel +358-44-701 1080 ------------ taidemuseo@pori.fi – www.poriartmuseum.fi

------------------------------------------------Inquiries:

Anni Venäläinen, chief curator / tel. +358 44 701 7601 /anni.venalainen@pori.fi

The first video, And then God blessed them, is a performance executed by the artist herself with her brother in which Bucak revisits the genesis myth of the monotheist religions, transforming the stage into a negotiation of gender politics. We are first confronted with a static shot of an indeterminate, stark white landscape where a female figure enters the frame holding a pickax. Digging a hole revealing black earth, throwing the mud and ribs at the apparently indifferent man, the scene in a Salt Lake recalls also the symbolism of salt as an element to conserve, clean and cook - all attributes stereotypically associated with the traditional female role.

Exhibited as a sort of ‘call and response’ the second video ‘Suggested place for you to see it’ makes the audience from a performance into the subject of a work. Here a camera is fixed on a group of thirteen Turkish-Kurdish women who are witnessing the performance of the artist in the same place. Bucak invited thirteen women from around different villages of the Salt Lake area in Turkey’s Anatolia. Each participant coming from different understanding of the gender issue today; some has been more conservative approach and some other feminist approach. This mixed group of women is invited to see, examine and comment the performance that was happening in front of them. “Translated from Turkish in subtitles, the women’s unadulterated comments and reactions to the artist’s performance become the content of the work itself, ranging from more immediate reactions such as ‘Perhaps the boy just won’t marry her?’ to more in depth discussions introduced by the symbolism: ‘The Imam said that it’s not true. Just a story! – I mean, creation out of a rib is not true.’ Anachronisms create an uncomfortable tension between what we see and what we hear in each video but in both cases there is a subtle humor at work. Bucak creates an almost palpable friction between a fictional scenario of her orchestration and a dialogue that is somehow more global and uncontrolled and the comments of the women reveal certain cultural entrenchments in Bucak’s audience”*

*From the statement written by Pati Lara for the The RYDER Projects, London exhibition

Fatma Bucak has had solo exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art (Turin), ARTER (Istanbul), Artpace (San Antonio), Alberto Peola Contemporary Art Gallery (Turin), and The Ryder Project (London). Her work has also been exhibited at the 54th Venice Biennale, The Jewish Museum (New York), International Festival of Non-fiction Film, MoMA (New York), SALT (Istanbul), ICA (London), Spike Island (Bristol), Contemporary Art Platform Gallery Space (Kuwait), Manifesta 9 (Genk), La Permanente Museum (Milan), Fondazione Fotografia (Modena), and Art in General (New York), among others. In 2013 she was the winner of the 13th Illy Present Future Prize, and was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in the same year. She was artist-in-residence at Townhouse, Cairo in 2014 and went on to win the Academy Now London award. She received the Arter – Koc Foundation Contemporary Art Grant andUniCredit Project Grant in 2011.

----------------------------- Eteläranta – 28100 Pori – Finland------------------------------------------- Tel +358-44-701 1080 ------------ taidemuseo@pori.fi – www.poriartmuseum.fi

------------------------------------------------Inquiries:

Anni Venäläinen, chief curator / tel. +358 44 701 7601 /anni.venalainen@pori.fi

Pori Art Museum has a background in the tradition of modern art but is focused in its exhibitions and publications on international contemporary art. Museums profile has been characterized by environmental issues such as eco-art, site specific art, identities, multiculturalism, human rights and society – the dialogue between the individual and culture, between the local and the global.

Starting in the early nineties, the museum has also focused on developing the possibilities of art pe-dagogy based on contemporary art. Colour workshops for babies (color bath for babies) is a totally new method of art pedagogy developed by the Pori Art Museum / Pori Centre for Children´s Culture. In recent years it has been a large success in Finland and is also widely interested foreign actors.

The situation of the museum by the beautiful river bank in the oldest part of the city of Pori and also exhibition spaces are unique in Finland. In an old customs house back to the 1860s there is one huge, unified exhibition hall, which adapts to the changing needs of the exhibitions and large windows overlooking the river landscape. It is accompanied by a number of other exhibition spaces including Sculpture Garden outside and some of the others underground.

And the most important of course, the regularly changing interesting exhibitions – together with Poriginal gallery over 40 shows every year - and large varied range of events produced for the audi-ence.

For more information, please visit our website: http://www.poriartmuseum.fi/fin/