The opening takes place on Saturday 29 January from 1–5pm. The show is running till 5 March 2022

Under the gallery’s recent theme of ‘dwelling’, Yılmaz’ installation weaves together images from ancient sites of human occupation, with speculation on what remains lost to history, and what we protect for the future: for posterity.

Yılmaz continues her investigation into sites of Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük, two UNESCO World Heritage-status locations in Anatolia, which are among the oldest known sites of perman-ent human settlement, linked to the Neolithic Revolution and the invention of agriculture. One of Yılmaz’ ongoing occupations with the stories of such sites is the idea of protection, and how beliefs and rituals are organised around practises of preservation and keeping-safe.

In a minimal installation that evokes the intimate domestic physical spaces of these sites, she presents her wooden sculptures of vultures, birds whose image features prominently at Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük. As animals who feed on the sick and dead, they were believed to be spiritual animals who carry the souls to the sky. Yılmaz’ wall-mounted wooden hybrids bring these symbolic beasts into a speculative future ruin.

The artist also presents here a literal process of preservation: dried ears of corn she has grown in the Netherlands. Bringing seeds from different regions and collections in Turkey, she multiplied and grew these crops in her own garden plot in a municipal allotment in Amsterdam’s Nieuw West, and in the Frans & Hilde hof (named after Francis of Assisi and Hildegard von Bingen) belonging to the Xavier Franciscus church in Amersfoort.

Combining hand-carving with contemporary technologies such as CNC milling and laser-cutting, Yılmaz produces environments inspired by feminist science fiction, retaining always the concept of protection to speculate on scarcity, preservation and shared futures.

 The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday from 2pm–6pm and by appointment.

Müge Yılmaz