Ayşe Erkmen, 1949

Born in İstanbul in 1949, Ayşe Erkmen was a student of Altan Gürman in the Department of Sculpture at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating, she went to Berlin in 1993 on a scholarship provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She has been living and working in Berlin and Istanbul since then. She is known for innovative and experimental works that transcend the traditional definition of sculpture.

Her point of departure being the exhibition space, Erkmen does not have a studio of her own. Emphasizing the connection of her works to interior and exterior space and highlighting their relationship with their surroundings, Erkmen not only uses the physical characteristics of architectural elements but also incorporates geographical, historical, political, and cultural contexts. Bringing new perspectives to three-dimensional artistic production, Erkmen’s works foreground typography, color, and sound together with intense conceptualization and abstraction.

In “PFM-1 and Others”, Erkmen shows us the coordinated motion of lethal sculptural forms with the entertaining yet ephemeral aesthetics of an MTV video clip. Although each of the forms is presented as if it were a character in a computer game or a cartoon, it is actually a “disneyized” landmine. Green-garbed munitions pulsate and hop rhythmically as they advance cutesily towards the viewer. All the time that the horrific mines that are employed so abundantly nowadays, such as during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, are being presented as lovable digital characters on the screen, the soundtrack continuously signals their concealed menace.