In the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the temporary gallery “Worlds Otherwise Hidden” features three international artists, including one in particular I’d like to focus on: Nevin Aladağ. Born in Turkey and based in Berlin, her works are multicultural. The gallery included two-dimensional portrait-style textiles of carpet, three-dimensional wire designs, and most resonant with me, video installations and experimental sound art.
Intricate carpet patterns were combined into three patchwork mosaics, collectively titled “Social Fabric”. According to her biography on the gallery wall, these works were intended to explore topics such as “transgressing borders, the individual and the collective, and identity formation by reimagining the patterns of everyday life into new topographies.” The carpets caught my attention even before the context, and the explanation made it more complex and beautiful still.
The video installation captivated me the instant I walked in. Three panels of screens revealed the musician behind the peaceful sounds playing in the exhibit – various percussion instruments sourced from the United Arab Emirates were played entirely by the environment itself, rolling along sand dunes or otherwise perpetuated by natural forces like the sea and the wind, creating an “audio-visual portrait” of the country. Other videos of hers not included in the gallery have had similar concepts, focusing on a specific culture, both the manmade urban and the natural rural environments.
This multidimensional gallery expressed the work of a multidimensional artist, showing that one can convey the same powerful themes through a variety of mediums. Aladağ doesn’t restrict herself to one form, but instead is courageous enough to explore many outlets to get her point across. Like the ideas behind the works themselves, she crosses boundaries and fuses identities through multiple approaches, creating a diverse and thought-provoking experience.