Gallery 5 is hosting "Devir" ("Transfer") as of January for a year. Throughout the project, with Gizem Karakaş's initiative, 12 artists, one artist each month, will be creating site-specific works by using the exhibition space as a workshop. The artists will install their works created throughout their workshop period into the space, and the exhibition will be opened under the same name in January 2020. The exhibition will be the 10th year exhibition of Gallery 5.
The "Transfer" project examines the dynamics between individual and collective production, the viewer and the producer, the boundaries and freedom. The artists included in the project will be selected by a "transfer" system: The artist chosen to start the project in January will select the artist who will assume the space in February and the artist working in February will select the artist to work in March and so on. Gizem Karakaş chose Merve Ünsal to kick start the project in January.
The artists will be assessing the space they produce in, in regards to the people surrounding this space, their relationships and dynamics and also consider the continuity of the work done before them. When artists leave the venue at the beginning of each month, they will conduct a transfer chat. In these chats, open to audiences, the artist leaving will inform the next artist about their work and process and the new artist will be asking them questions.
About Merve Ünsal
Merve Ünsal, who pushes the use of text and photographs beyond their usual forms, has completed her Bachelor's degree in Art History and Visual Arts at Princeton University and her graduate degree in photography at Parsons The New School for Design. The artist is also the founding editor of online publishing initiative m-est.org and has attended research and hospitality programs at Delfina Foundation (London), PRAKSIS (Oslo), Banff Centre (Banff), Homework Space (Beirut, et cetera). She participated in many exhibitions in Berlin, Beirut, Boston, Delhi, Cairo, London and New York and lives and works in Istanbul.