m-est.org | İz Öztat

Daredevil

As we unlock the door of a room in the former hospital building, I ask my companion how the ongoing war has been felt in Germany. “Everybody is concerned about the heating costs for the winter,” they answer. Behind the door, I have the biggest studio I have ever had to myself, albeit temporarily. Right in the middle of the space, two five-meter-high cast iron columns stand in close proximity to support a beam. The columns still stand because when the authorities wanted to demolish the building, people resisted vehemently. From the top of the columns, angels stare down, half of them praying, the other half extending their arms with compassion towards the patients who once laid below. Fixated on the missing arm of one angel, I wonder if I will be able to disregard them during my stay here. Or will I have to find a place for these sculpted angels in my own story? 

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“Daredevil” has been produced in one of the studio spaces of Kunstquartier Bethanien during an artist residency supported by the stipend of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, made possible in the frame of a cooperation between the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) and the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin as well as DEPO in Istanbul.