After the ink is made together, there will be a series of watercolor/ink sketching workshops that I would run. These images would be exhibited in the neighborhoods as well as in gallery settings in Pasajist in Istanbul as well as at Five Years in London. The ink would also be sold during these exhibitions to cover expenses as well as an income generation project for the inhabitants of the neighborhoods. It would hopefully be a way to keep the project going and to create an alternative economy for the inhabitants.
The two chosen neighborhoods would be one in Konya, a city known for being Rumi’s residence; and a neighborhood in Istanbul that is being gentrified.
The activity at Five Years could be the exhibition of the images made during the workshop, and another workshop for the visitors to sketch with the ink for two hours during their visit. A gallery is not usually a space where art is made on the spot together, so it would be a different way to experience the gallery as a workshop setting.
Theoretically: the project is about participatory art, and archives. Ink is a very symbolic material that alludes to the permanent, the archived, the precious, the refined, the elegant, the intellectual, the pure – and yet, contradictorily, it is coming from the soot chimneys of neighborhoods that will be transformed, it is usually a waste material, assumed to be dirty, non-precious, and the exact opposite of the qualities of the ink that it can make. It is about exploring the roots of something… perhaps of the locations where the workshops are taking place.
Ceyda Oskay is currently an MA student at the Royal College of Art.
She has worked on social projects with the United Nations for over ten years.
www.pasajist.org. | www.ceydaoskay.com | instagram: ceydaoskayart | https://pasajist.wordpress.com
* Pasajist is an independent art space in Istanbul, Turkey that is known for its participatory projects
51
Friday 25 May 2018
2-3pm
Ink, Inc.
Pasajist* & Ceyda Oskay
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