Artist: Hale Tenger
Date: 2015
Size: 920 x 570 cm
Technique: Print
By exploring issues related to identity, patriarchal culture, and social tensions caused by acts of violence and conflict, Hale Tenger points to the political and cultural problems of Turkey in her work, with a focus on both its historical and contemporary political climate. Drawing on the contrasts between internal versus external, life versus death, and presence versus absence, Tenger’s artistic practice also incorporates sound as an important element. Hale Tenger’s installation “We didn’t go outside; we were always on the outside / We didn’t go inside; we were always on the inside” was originally conceived for the 4th Istanbul Biennial. Tenger used a guard’s cabin she chanced upon during a site visit to Antrepo, the main venue of the biennial, as the basis of this work. She has reproduced the installation for an exhibition in New York 20 years after its first display, remaining faithful to the original. The installation was realised in this form again during the inauguration of Arter’s building in Dolapdere in 2019 as part of the exhibition “What Time Is It?”. Hale Tenger’s installation explores contrasting issues of inclusion and exclusion as well as inside and outside. Surrounded by barbed wire, the interior walls and windows of the wooden booth are covered with old postcards, posters, calendar pages, and landscape photographs. This small, isolated space creates a fictional outside world from within its boundaries through the various landscape images from unknown places. The empty tea glass left on the table and the Turkish classical music playing on the small radio create the impression that someone occupying the booth has just left. Laden with associations of being both temporally and spatially enclosed or cooped up, the installation’s own boundaries complicate the distinction between inside and outside.
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