Skin the Earth

Deniz Burak FLAG

If you happen to be in Kabataş, while walking or in your vehicle, a 260m2 wall will attract your attention.

On that wall, you will see an installation that draws attention through art to the decreasing number of green areas that we need to escape from the scorching heat that has recently affected Istanbul and to the problem of Istanbul becoming concretized.

At first glance, the installation may seem like a toy advertisement, but it is not. 46 bulldozers scraping a green ground and accumulating it in front of it, moving uncontrollably in different directions, form this installation, while the wall creates a vertical earth image.

STATES OF THE CITIES

You can see and interpret it however you want, whether it is the ground or the canvas; but at the end of the day, it is the side wall of a building. Those who have watched the project will understand that I am talking about the non-profit contemporary art project “Yankoşe”, which has been continuing its mission as a public art space for 11 years and prioritizing social benefit. The artist of the project, which has focused on many social issues that have been on the national and world agenda for 10 years, is Alper Aydın, known to millions of people with his striking exhibition “Fata Morgana” in Ordu. His installation, which he calls “Geo Atlas”, is a symbol of the unplanned and uncontrolled impact of man on nature, the destroyed green areas of Istanbul and urban transformation.

When it comes to destruction, we may think that the first tool that comes to mind is the bulldozer, but we cannot say that Aydın's work is only about the act of destruction. The dominance of a fiction in which bulldozers skin and injure the earth leaves a mark in the minds of the viewers that will take a long time to repair, just like in nature.

What made Aydin proudest was the reaction of the children. The artist, who observed that they were impressed to see 50 bulldozer toys in front of them all of a sudden, added, “Although Geo-Atlas is a project that emphasizes the current situation of the cities, it is gratifying to see that the language I created has passed on to the other side and created awareness because of the close relationship it establishes with the children.” The project can be seen until the end of October.