Exposé actuellement
The CollectionBibliography
Bernard Fibicher (ed.), Résister, encore: œuvres d’art, culture & démocratie, Geneva, JRP Editions, Dijon, Les presses du réel, Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, 2022.
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, « Today in History », ArtForum, vol. 57, no 5, january 2019, p. 146-151.
The Turkish artist Banu Cennetoğlu trained as a photographer. She is interested in classification, access to knowledge, information dissemination and the political aspects of archives and archival collection. Her conceptual language takes shape in installations and print formats. Her interest in writing led her to found the publishing company Bent and the exhibition space BAS in Istanbul in 2006, to collect, disseminate, and publish artist’s books and journals in Turkey.
Gurbet’s Diary (27.07.1995 – 08.10.1997), shown for the first time at Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017, pays homage to Gurbetelli Ersöz. Ersöz was editor in chief of the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgur Gündem. She was imprisoned and tortured for her journalism, after which she joined the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). From 1995 to her death in combat in 1997, she kept a diary in which she recorded war narratives, poetry, and self-critical reflections.
Cennetoğlu’s work consists of a steel shelf and 145 lithographic stones inscribed with all 107 entries from Gurbetelli Ersöz’s diary, in printable condition. The solidity of the materials reflects the importance of keeping a trace of dissident voices threatened by censorship and the passage of time. Each volume of the silent library is a fragment of a monument to resistance.