“CHORUS”
Gülçin Aksoy


Observation chorus, artists chorus, tree chorus, carrot –mallet- chalice chorus, crying chorus, chorus of choruses, chorus chefs chorus, yourselves chorus, chorists chorus, choral activities, ones who talk as much as their choruses, ones who have choruses and troubles, ones who come to choruses, chorus sweet as honey, snowy chorus, from chorus to chorus, ones without chorus… chorus land…

Gülçin Aksoy, approaches mundane and ordinary looking settings, objects, situations and events as a field of cratology research, suggests a direct and simple observation to how obedience- potency relations create subjects/ places/ facts and the damages and traumas they create. The artist scrutinizes yesterday’s and today’s institutive “norms” in an autobiographical frame inspiring from places and people around via a family, gender, moral, social class, state and officials’ ideologies. Gülçin Aksoy, via the exhibition named “KORO”, visualizes, in a tactical and ironic way, potency mechanisms, either hidden or apparent, deformation or loss of memory from personal to public field, from daily life to history, from personal relations to social consensus. “KORO” as a commune saying melodic or rhythmic words is from time to time passive and acting on directions and sometimes watching, explicating, assessing participating reflex, is a perfect metaphor for social life dynamics. According to Gülçin Aksoy “When one starts to crush the questions they ask themselves and their potentials within, going beyond the bounds of the materials and the methods that are being used and even destroying them in the process leads to another course of action, and the questions are rebuilt on an even more internal basis.”

“KORO”, with Derya Yücel’s curatorial cooperation, an anthology of Gülçin Aksoy’s recent works from tapestries, photography to performances, is meeting with the audience in Private Galata Greek Primary School between 5 - 30 September 2018.



Apart from continuing her active art production which began in the 90s, Gülçin Aksoy has been a part of many collective artistic practices. The artist made her solo debut exhibition in 1991 and has been working in the Painting Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University as a faculty member since 1993. Aksoy, who runs the Tapestry Studio, has never separated her artistic production from her educator identity and, positions her artistic production on educating and learning as a whole experience. The latest project she has done with her students “Learning Process” is still on display at “Academiae Youth Art Bienale” in Boozen, Italy. While the personal exhibition she did in 2014 at Depo, Double Story, contained fictional edits of the artist’s life, the two simultaneous exhibitions she did in 2017, “A” in the Zilberman Gallery and “The Family Cemetery I Love” in Perşembe Pazarı, examined the social potency/power patterns in a more subtle way. Some of the activities the artist has participated in are: “Mobilising Memory” Vienna (2015), 4th Çanakkale Biennial (2014), “Trading Station” Liverpool (2012), “1. Klohausen Biennial” Munich (2012), “City Scale” Munich - İstanbul (2010), “1. İStanbul Yaya Sergileri” (1st Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions) (2002)