Annika Eriksson
Now you see us now you don’t
Şimdi bizi görüyorsunuz
şimdi görmüyorsunuz
Now you see us now
you don’t is a permanent neon sign installation by Annika Eriksson, placed on
the back entrance of the 5th block at IMÇ (Istanbul Manifaturacılar
Çarşısı) - the iconic modernist shopping center in Istanbul designed during the
city’s urban modernisation period in the late 1950’s.
The purely Functionalist building, conceived as a “modern utopia”,
was built incorporating the traditional bazaar structure into an experimental
modern system with large corridors surrounding the open-air atrium located at
the center of each block. IMÇ was built divided into six blocks according to
different industries including: garment textiles, interior decoration textiles,
sewing machines and music.
Like a ghost from the future, Now
you see us now you don’t blinks from the concrete exterior wall of the 5th
block as a promise and a threat hinting at its precarious state. In the last
decade, justified as a policy to protect the historic peninsula of Istanbul,
the municipality has tried but failed to pass a proposal to build Ottoman
villas by demolishing IMÇ. Located in an ideal spot, a bridge apart from
central neighbourhoods, an enforced relocation is inevitable and only a matter
of time for İMÇ. When the day comes, the sign will continue its lifespan
alongside it and disappear in the rubble of the building.
Eriksson sets up a spatial situation and distorts notions of time with Now you see us now you don’t. She inscribes an
ambiguous text referring to the building’s present state of temporal ambiguity.
Alluding to its possible demise, the text acts as a subversive resistance from
a frontier between construction and destruction, then and now, also bringing
forth the erasure of personal and socio-cultural histories tied to public
structures of this scale.
Annika Eriksson is a Swedish artist living in Berlin. Over the years,
Eriksson has produced a large number of works in which the perception of time,
structures of power, and once acclaimed social visions are called into
question. Strategically Eriksson plays with the heated debates around the
public realm and structures that regulate it, revealing the urban changes and how
this is subject to unexpected political appropriations and inversions.
Selected recent exhibitions include: 13th Istanbul
Biennial; I am the dog that was
always here (loop), KIOSK, Ghent, 2013; Critical Mass, St Petersburg, 2013; When Attitudes Became Form
Become Attitudes, Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2012; The
Trilogy, Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2012; The Great Good Place,
Krome Gallery, 2012; The Shanghai Biennale/City Pavilion Istanbul, 2012;The
Best of Times, The Worst of Times; Rebirth and Apocalypse in
Contemporary Art, Kiev Biennale, 2012; Non Gallery, Istanbul, 2011; Wir
sind wieder da, DAAD Galerie, Berlin, 2011; A Rehearsal/Fable of the Bees commission for Flat Time House,
London 2012 and for NON Stage, Istanbul 2011.
Curated by Filiz Avunduk