Born in 1982 in Bucharest. Lives and works in Bucharest.
“Parthenon Marbles” evolves around the request of repatriation of the famous Parthenon sculptures, metopes and friezes from the collection of the British Museum to the Acropolis Museum in Athens, as a metaphor and an entry point into a larger discussion about capital, imperial looting, accumulation, circulation, global cultural heritage, production of value, redistribution and the role of the arts within today’s economies. It proposes a performative, immaterial version of the sculptural ensemble that can materialize in various contexts. The textual layer reflecting on the financial and legal implications of the sculptures’ situation is a speculative journey into a “what if” scenario of return, drawn from a collaboration with curator and writer Victoria Ivanova, that looks at the work in relation to the financial concept of “derivative” - a tool for identifying concrete but obscured socio-economic advantages of holding prized artifacts as well as a means for redistributing value through dematerialization, re-materialization and re-circulation. Simultaneously and thanks to its own “immaterial” consistency, the work proposes and produces a model for a more flexible and open-ended idea of exhibition making, form of display, artistic patrimony and sense of belonging. The performative Parthenon Marbles can circulate anywhere via memory and embodiment, encouraging us to imagine a more equitable and sustainable field of “transnational culture”. The immaterial, performative “Parthenon Marbles” have materialized for a first time on the Acropolis of Athens, underneath the Parthenon.
Performers:
Deniz Yıldız, Esra Aysal, Melis Göbekçioğlu, Uğur Mete, Yeliz Saydan
