Dry Summer
12 March - 30 November 2022
Eldem Art Space | Dalyancı Mansion
ESKİŞEHİR
Exhibition participants: Alper Aydın, Alpin Arda Bağcık, Özgür Demirci, Elmas Deniz, Bekir Dindar, Berna Dolmacı, Erdal Duman, Murat Germen, İz Öztat, Ilgın Seymen, Hale Tenger, Gülhatun Yıldırım and birbuçuk
Curator: Melike Bayık
We are in the midst of an environmental water crisis. Every day we spend is the coolest last day on earth. Drought and water scarcity threaten life. Conscious water consumption and every step that can take to prevent global warming and raise awareness is very important. It is very difficult to try to live with water consumption, water pollution, the gradual disappearance of life, and the fact that a young sea like the Marmara Sea has recently started to lose its entire living ecosystem. It is very important to slow down the ecological crisis and water problem on a local and global scale and to adopt a sustainable practice.
Turkey is a geography where agriculture and irrigation areas are intense and fresh and salt water is frequently found throughout the country. But the escalating drought disaster clearly indicates that the country has begun to sound a red alert. Awareness will be raised that careless and unplanned irrigation and use of drilling water for agricultural areas cause water loss and drying up of lakes and ponds.
Dry Summer, as a research-based project that demonstrated the sustainability of the water crisis, also considered many interrelated social and political issues. Since the center of the project was Eskişehir, attention was drawn to the center-periphery relationship and awareness was raised on the protection of important water resources such as creeks, streams, ponds and wetlands of Central Anatolia.
The project aimed to support freedom of expression and thought concerning a wide range of problems such as migration, war, discrimination, living space issues and human rights violations that societies and minorities will experience in the face of water crisis. In this respect, the project seeked to strengthen relations with local governments with an aim to develop regional awareness and to provide democratic insight to the individual and society on the ecology and economy of water.
The Dry Summer project covered works of several well-known artists focusing on water crisis including Alper Aydın, Alpin Arda Bağcık, Özgür Demir, Elmas Deniz, Bekir Dindar, Berna Dolmacı, Erdal Duman, Murat Germen, İz Öztat, Ilgın Seymen, Hale Tenger, Gülhatun Yıldırım as well birbuçuk, which is a research, seminar initiative in ecology and art studies.
