Past Exhibitions

Another Apocalypse is Possible

1 October - 11 October 2021

A Selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection
CURATOR: LEYLA ÜNSAL

A selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, which has been hosting digitally-produced photography, videos, neon-LED works, installations and New Media works, since the 1990s.

The Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, which holds the privilege of being the first member of the International Association of Corporate Collections of Contemporary Art (IACCCA) from Turkey, brings together key representatives of the international contemporary arts scene with a new exhibition, titled Another Apocalypse is Possible. The exhibition calls for a dialogue on the possibilities of renewing humankind’s relationship with nature, history, and life.

How accurate is it to label disasters as ‘natural’, when they result from humans’ failure to coexist with one another and with other species on earth? Perhaps it is civilisation itself that is in agony, collapsing and burning? Scientists are now certain that the existence of our species on earth has entered an irreversible process of collapse. A privileged minority, who know this, are already searching for ways to move to other planets, to find new resources for consumption. However, this colonialist mentality has not been the only reaction to this impending cataclysm. Others choose to move gracefully in the opposite direction and talk about life and settlement differently. They believe ‘another apocalypse is possible’, on the condition that we no longer take a single breath without honouring our debt to all other living and non-living beings.

A new concept of healing is growing in the arts, sciences and philosophy, that does away with heroic promises of emancipation. This call to healing is echoed in the words of children, peasants, artists and others. One only needs to slow down a bit to hear this desire for a common cause, which exudes from the open wounds that disasters cause and circulates the earth through social media. This urgent and perhaps final call is for humans to renew their relationship to nature, history, and life in general. 

The human species has experienced vulnerability in all its materiality. Humans have remembered their finitude and have done so collectively. Standing at the end of a long march of conquest, in which the individual declared war on everything living and non-living, merely for their own personal gain, we now find ourselves talking about why altruism, mercy and gracefulness are more effective for survival. We now eavesdrop on animals and plants, to see if we can hear their wisdom, but we do this with ears deafened by the noise of construction sites. For the first time, perhaps, we touch the earth and water with compassion, after having poisoned them both. Myths, rituals, and spirituality from alternative pasts are calling us back. The more we think of these, the more we think of artists. Artists who have become the shamans, sages, inventors and healers of our age, those who refuse to let the body and the conscience engage with short-term interests; we need them more than ever, in every one of our meditations, as we seek to strongly feel the sensibility we desperately need, in a world deprived of its past and future utopias.

Artists: Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Axel Hütte, Brigitte Kowanz, Boomoon, Christopher Dahlhausen, David Parker, Edward Burtynsky, Eelco Brand, John Gerard, Lynn Davis, Michael Kenna, Niko Luoma, Olaf Otto Becker, Sebastião Salgado, Wang Sishun, Serkan Taycan.

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