Artist
Gulsah Ayla Bayrak
Gulsah Ayla Bayrak (born 1997), is an interdisciplinary artist from Belgium, working on the larger themes of identity and belonging, in a complex world of interactions between her the different fragments that she embodies: Her Turkish roots and her political identity as a citizen of modern Europe, juxtaposed for the ramifications of feminist theory when thinking about the body and the self and the cultural and political consequences of queerness in an era of increasing polarization, but also of multiple polarities. Taking the migration stories in her own family as a starting point, Bayrak draws on personal biographies, to re-narrate events in such a way as to reconstruct the experience of lived time, and not merely chronologies. In her practice, moving seamlessly between Asia and Europe, both physically and emotionally, the polarity of global north versus global south emerges sharply, around the political definition of “East”—a borderland of European modernity, wholly constructed by it. The idea of the fragment resurfaces in Bayrak’s projects as a partial narrative, constitutive of our shared, social experience, and which cannot be dovetailed or manipulated, so that it remains always alive, fresh, fragile, and unfinished. In this inconclusiveness the artist finds paradox, and within paradox, the complexities of modern identities fabricated from torn off bits of different, larger structures. In dealing with objects as markers of memory, and with memories as physical objects Gulsah Ayla Bayrak creates unfinishable threads of historicity, unfolding in simultaneity, searching for a lost, but ultimately unidentifiable, temporal index.
Bloody Hamam
Bloody hamam is a project that started after the artist experienced the painting La Grande Odalisque. This project demonstrates how art as experience can create a five-year-long journey of researching, questioning and undergoing the art on different levels. By researching orientalism in a way, she could give some situations that accrued in her life meaning. She continuously questioned her position on this topic by travelling physically and spiritually from east to west and vice versa. To cope with the information she had received, she translated them into rituals and performances and documented her process by accepting, collecting and disassembling it.
The 10th edition of .tiff reflects a diversity of voices, positions, and subject matter. It is a passionate group of artists and photographers, who each try to give personal answers to today’s questions. Gülsah Ayla Bayrak and Rami Hara take their personal histories of migration and stereotypes as a starting point to explore identification, mythification, and the idea of belonging. Lived experience also guides the work of Seppe Van Craywinkel and his celebration of freedom, friendship, and spontaneity. Where Arian Christiaens explores her family’s archive, searching for her own position as photographer, daughter, mother, lover, and woman, Lars Duchateau invites viewers to link possible narratives with cryptic large format photographs, each one inspired by newspaper articles.
Elsewhere, Barbara Debeuckelaere treads a thin line between fiction and reality, delving into the Romanian fanbase of the American television series Dallas; Ligia Poplawska considers emotions, solastalgia, and climate anxiety in a changing world; and Alice Pallot shines her light on the Lommel Sahara in Belgium, rendering it alien without any post-production.
These artists work across a variety of media, encompassing books, video and installations. Their stories are as diverse as their approach: documentary, analytical, poetic, conceptual, humorous, intimate and most of all fresh and thought-provoking.
Over the years, .tiff has succeeded in building a Belgian photography community that allows for an exchange of ideas and insights between artists, curators, critics, and researchers. The current selection shows that this community is ever growing - and that Belgian photography will continue to reinvent itself for many years to come.