Elmas Deniz at 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent, Istanbul (08/10/2019)
Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, 16th Istanbul Biennial: The Seventh Continent opened its doors to the audience on September 14, 2019. As part of the biennial, Elmas Deniz’s works Lost waters, 2019 and History of a particular nameless creek, 2019 can be seen at MSFAU Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture until November 10, 2019.
In her conceptual works, Elmas Deniz calls attention to ecological changes occurring with capitalism and the age of the Anthropocene. She examines the changing of the landscape and the deterioration of the nature by humankind. Deniz is showing two works about disappeared flows of water. The first one is a three-dimensional topographic relief of Istanbul, spanning the area from Şişli to Taksim Square. On this relief, lost rivers and creeks are marked on the current roads. Deniz’s other piece centres on a creek near which she grew up, near Bergama. This wall installation, while focusing on the small and insignificant, calls attention to natural and human-caused environmental transformations and extinctions.