Pg Art Gallery presents Aliye Simavi’s first solo exhibition entitled “Collected Memories” between 6 and 28 February 2018.
In her practice, Simavi focuses on scenes from daily life. In this exhibition which brings together her black-and-white and colored photographs, she once again builds a microcosm out of several cultural objects and natural remains that collected from all over the world.
Seeing nature as the most talented artist, Simavi is very much attracted to and inspired by the interaction between people and nature. Her installation sharing the same title with the exhibition includes objects and remains that she admiringly and passionately collected. Installed within a glass showcase, the work brings together things as diverse as a dinosaur egg, a shark tooth, the penis bone of a walrus, the fossilized pelvis of a cave bear, the bone of a sawfish, vertebra of a whale, the grinder tooth of the artist herself, a slingshot, an axe head dating from Stone Age, and a wooden African statue. Each of these objects which are rarely found and not mass produced is a reminiscence of the past, just like a photograph that records a moment that no longer exists.
The images in this exhibition, which has been installed like a small scale natural history museum, can be replicated; another shark tooth or vertebra of another whale can be found anywhere else; there is nothing unique. However there is still something that makes them very special: They all build a memory. Conservation and transmission of the past into the present involves not only freezing time but also compiling a personal archive. Like a photograph that selects and isolates from the flow of time a single moment, a dinosaur egg from millions of years ago invites the viewer to explore the truth and the story hidden behind what it actually shows.
