Between Breaths, 2023
Merve Ünsal. Still from Between Breaths, 2023. Multimedia documentation. Video by Doğa Yirik.
Merve Ünsal, installation view of Between Breaths at Intimations, AVTO (Istanbul), January 2024.
“Derived from the artist’s encounter with a sinkhole in, Obruk Plateau, Konya, Between Breaths serves as a record of a happening. Reflecting on the decline in underground water levels due to uncontrolled groundwater consumption, Merve interprets the ensuing sinkholes as manifestations of delusion, inward collapse, and surface withdrawal. Events commonly categorized as “disasters,” such as drought and thirst, contribute to the formation of these karstic landforms, resembling the collapse of ceilings within cavities formed over time by soluble rocks underground. Merve’s text, scribed through channeling and listening to the earth, intertwines personal, social, temporal, and historical collapses and disasters. Deliberately edited to not have any punctuation and capitalization, the text attempts to evoke moments when language comes to fail and intersects with the spatial collapses designed by the artist on paper through its situation within the layout. The sound recording documenting moments chanted during the happening melds the collapse of the earth and the inability to trace individual agencies.” - excerpted from the text for Intimations penned by the AVTO team.
