Sibel Horada

Born in 1980 in Istanbul, the artist completed her undergraduate studies in Visual Arts at Brown University (USA) in 2003 and received her M.A. in the faculty of Art and Design from Yıldız Technical University (Turkey). Her work focuses on collective and personal histories with an interest in urban, archaeological and ecological cultures. She investigates memories of erasure with stories that weave together strange, coincidental details. Using text and forms, she materializes her encounters in poetic sculptures and installations.

Horada participated to the first term of SAHA Studio, which took place between August 2019-February 2020. Sibel Horada's artist video can be accessed from the link below. 

Sibel Horada | 1st Term Artist Videos

Taksim [Division] Means to Divide

During her residency at SAHA Studio, Sibel Horada experienced Taksim Square every day on her way to and from the studio. Given the weight of Taksim’s history in the spectre of its current transformation and the impossibility of anticipating its future, she struggled until she began to imagine that the maksem, an old water structure after which Taksim is named, is still functioning metaphorically.

The name of the square comes from the maksem, an 18^th century water distribution structure built to divide the water coming from Maslak (Istanbul’s current financial district), which literally means “continuously flowing water pipeline”. The Taksim Maqsem is still located at the end of Istiklal Street, on the corner of the old water reservoir behind the Taksim Republic Monument and the mosque currently under construction. Here, the rate at which water was distributed among three neighborhoods was negotiated daily by means of a dynamic mechanism. Although the expanding city has actually interrupted the historical waterway, the artist imagines that this maqsem quietly maintains its resource allocation function. She associates the flow and interruption of water with the flow of people, traffic, time and memory; the flow of currency and with ideological, political as well as artistic regimes. A performative artist talk provides insight into the ways in which architecture in Taksim has dynamically attempted to control these flows. 

Learning that the Taksim Republic Monument was designed and built as a public square fountain, which was never connected to running water, she explores the possibilities of generating a space of creativity in still water. In a video work, she uses the water accumulated inside the basins on two sides of the monument for the art of marbling. This provides a peculiar way of asserting presence in Taksim square. 

By applying this traditional ornamentation technique on daily newspapers, she produces a self-defined relationship with current affairs. We thus begin to see newspapers as aesthetic creations that signify specific moments in the flow of time.

www.sibelhorada.com