Gone with the Wind, 2024
Mixed media
Car parts, latex weather balloon, video, text, two prints
Dimensions variable
Göksu Kunak combines textual and audiovisual elements in their performances and installations to draw attention to (chrono)political events at the intersection of stereotyped non-Western dramaturgies and (self-)censorship. In doing so, they interweave contemporary phenomena with an aesthetic which stages the body as a sculpture and muscles as objects. A car accident at the center of their multimedia installation is a metaphor for a politically corrupt, patriarchal system. “Gone with the Wind” (2024) references a fatal 1996 car crash in the Turkish city of Susurluk, which culminated in a political scandal. The identities of the occupants of the car revealed suspicious connections between the Turkish government, the ultra-nationalistic paramilitary Grey Wolves organization, and the Turkish mafia which pointed to a state within a state and created a watershed moment. A photograph of the totaled Mercedes went viral and later formed the basis for a popular Turkish soap opera. Kunak has reenvisaged and altered this image, adding car parts, thereby creating a symbol for state secrets, corruption, and the state’s policies of concealment and dissembling.
“Gone with the Wind” as a part of “Half-Light” Berlin Program for Artists group exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art curated by Linda Franken with the support by Sophia Yvette Scherer
Public Program curator Anna-Lisa Scherfose
Photos by Frank Sperling
