Collars, Gravity, Kisses

Long, gray canvases are nailed to the wall. They are at once fragile and rough, with torn edges. Gravity drapes the textile works, but it is the evening light that animates them, casting flickering shadows on the white wall. Here, Günbike Erdemir creates an extension of her usual drawings. “I wanted to bring the architecture of the lines and motifs to life in physical space.” In the installation Collars, Gravity, Kisses, Erdemir explores power dynamics, intimacy, and desire through drawings and sculptural objects. One of the textile works consists of a pair of gloves reaching for each other. They seem to depict a tragic story of (indirect) touch, attraction, and repulsion. “They have a past in them,” Erdemir explains, pointing to their battered look.

The installation tells a fictional story, which she wrote for the publication of her thesis. It follows the interaction between three characters: a lurker, a ghost, and an executioner. Instead of literally depicting the story, Erdemir leaves her work open-ended: “The installation and the different works share the same psychological and physical landscape but can also stand alone.” The theoretical framework of her research aligns with autofiction and the theories of queer writers, such as Paul Preciado. For instance, the small pencil drawing in the wooden frame is directly inspired by Preciado's Contrasexual Manifesto, in which he humorously urges people to call every penis a dildo as a rebellion against heteronormativity. Erdemir shares this interest in the body and eroticism, and suggestively draws a trans-masculine persona to question social conventions. In other drawings, erotic practices and fantasies, such as tying or role-playing, recur as a way of questioning power dynamics in reality.

By hanging the drawings on architectural frames and distancing them from the wall, they find themselves closer to our physical space. Fiction, or 'storytelling' as a methodology, is most evident in the orange mailbox that hangs among the textile works. It is the only work in the installation with a bright color and a directly recognizable reference to reality. Erdemir invites us into her fictional realm through an intimate letter exchange, making the installation, as a whole, an extension of her storytelling.

Interview with An-Katrien Callebaut for Metropolis M Eindexamens 2024