Mesopotamian Dramaturgies / Dome

2009

Lentos Art Museum, Linz, Austria, 2009

Commissioned by:
The British School at Rome,Italy
Francesca Minini, Milan,Italy
The Henry Moore Foundation,UK
Vehbi Koc Foundation, Turkey

Dome is a video sculpture inspired by the dome structures of Rome, revisited in the Eastern context. It is constructed with identical plasma screen monitors hanging as a tile structure from a ceiling and facing downward, showing Turkish male youth posing in Western style but Eastern attitudes. It is an attempt to create the illusion of flying in heaven, but only with the aid of heavy construction equipment: a symbol of modernizing forces in Anatolia as straight roads are built as symbols of modernity, brutally slicing the old landscape and reshaping it.