[Didem Erbaş] the imagined silence

Hush Gallery presents “The Imagined Silence,” the first solo show of Didem Erbaş, running from October 17 to December 5, 2015. The exhibition consists of collected objects and photographs, drawn from the artist’s momentarily feelings, as well as her main medium of painting. Creating a dialogue with the assembled archive, Erbaş tells stories never before heard/never before seen/forgotten. The exhibition reflects the changes in the individual when hope in stories has been lost, and can be seen everyday (except Sunday and Monday) at Hush Gallery – located in Yeldeğirmeni, Kadıköy – between the hours of 11:00 and 18:00.

Didem Erbaş seeks to make phrases and stories visible. In her narratives, she crafts individual and societal relationships, asking such questions as: “Can men live when hope dies?” and “What remains when we wander away from reality?” Erbaş investigates the conflict between hope and despair in the social and political plane that we occupy, trying to understand the point at which these forces support and destroy each other. As Eugenio Borgna said: “Despair and hope have been drawn into the vortex of existential destruction and futility; time has stopped and petrified in an unending present; no leaps remain between the present and the future; likewise, the future has been surrendered to the ghosts and obsessions of the past.”

In “the imagined silence,” Erbaş brings her chosen objects and faces from photographs to life by fictionalizing stories, while also revolving concepts of identity and memory. She invites hopeless identities and memories to take on roles through her own experiences. The exhibition allows the audience an opportunity to encounter confrontations aligned with their own experiences, via Erbaş’ paintings and installations. Transforming the gallery space with her “dark form” and inextinguishable “candle object,” she sets forth her stance against her own hope.

“The imagined silence” offers the experience of stories which have never encountered and invites the audience to explore an artist’s world that challenges hopelessness.
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