Didem Erk

As a visual artist Didem Erk uses performance, video, installation and text as tools in her works and explores the relationship of space with notions such as language, memory and border/frontiers. She examines the flaws and fictional elements of personal and social memory. The act of remembering takes place through Erk’s method of conveying her art, performance, and site-specific installation. While handling sociological events as forms and concepts, she positions her language somewhere between political and poetic. In order to liberate from the destructive attitude of censorship and self-censorship in history, she focuses on healing and reintegrating the destruction into the world through some manipulations on found objects, body, surface and paper. Didem Erk (b. 1986, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul. She completed her graduate and postgraduate studies in Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design department at Sabancı University. Artist’s selected exhibitions include: “Words Are Very Unnecessary” (Arter, 2020), 5x5x5 program as part of Manifesta 12 (Palermo, Sicily, 2018), “Video Echoes: Waves from the Eastern Mediterranean” (Counihan Gallery, Brunswick, Australia, 2018), “Nonlinear Histories: Transgenerational Memory of Trauma'' (ReflectSpace Gallery, Glendale, CA, USA, 2018), “TarraWarra International 2017: All That is Solid…” (TarraWarra Museum of Art, Australia, 2017), “Home Is A Place Called Never” (x-ist, İstanbul, 2017), “Are You Still Alive - Voices of Conscience at a Time of Silencing” (Steirische KulturInitiative, Graz, Austria, 2017), “Blow Up: Kavunu Gördüm” (SALT Galata, Istanbul, 2017), “House of Wisdom” (Berlin & Amsterdam, 2017), “Stay With Me” (Belvedere Museum-21er Haus, Vienna, 2016), “Mom, am I Barbarian?” 13th Istanbul Biennial, (Arter, Istanbul, Turkey, 2013).