All fears are dulled by routine, 2016
Merve Ünsal, All fears are dulled by routine, 2016. Vinyl text. Installation view from Why Are You Here, TOZ, Istanbul, February 2016.
“Departing from her own daily rituals of looking and observing, Ünsal tries to build intimacy between her, her view, and her viewer. Here the trope of window becomes a placeholder for thresholds, for obstacles. But really, when does the camera turn into a protective shield or a window through which one reaffirms a power hierarchy? In her text-based gesture attached to the glass window of the storefront gallery, Ünsal creates another threshold, the one that sits between passers-by and the confined space of the exhibition. Only visible from outside, her sign reads: “All horrors are dulled by routine.” This quote (taken from Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile) poses an essential question for all the works on display here: What type of engagement does one seek to keep looking at images, regardless of what they show, be it images of distress or the banal details of daily life?”
—excerpted from Özge Ersoy’s text On Hold, published in full here.
