SCENT OF TIME - revisiting, rethinking and reimagining

Scent of Time revolves around the construction of time in individual consciousness, an amalgam of our perception, memory and imagination defying the irrevocable passage of time by the arbitrary numbers on a clock while forming a unity of all experiences for the self. This unique construction, born out of insight, is explored throughout the exhibition mimicking a cyclical structure of time, thoughts on thoughts overlapping and lingering just like scent does.

Atakan’s visual language draws on the repercussions of historical, cultural and societal transformations which are fostered in the mind and legible on the body, creating a juxtaposition of images belonging to a past and in the making of a future.

The act of remembering is definitive of her works and carried out through her poems either embroidered on cloth or heard over video works.

Scent of Time revolves around the construction of time in individual consciousness, an amalgam of our perception, memory and imagination defying the irrevocable passage of time by the arbitrary numbers on a clock while forming a unity of all experiences for the self. This unique construction, born out of insight, is explored throughout the exhibition mimicking a cyclical structure of time, thoughts on thoughts overlapping and lingering just like scent does.

Forming the backbone of the exhibition, “Searching for the Scent of Time” made in 2022 is a revisit to the time when Nancy was collecting antique table clocks from flea markets while being followed through the lens of director Letisya Tapan and producer Dilek Aydın, for a documentary in the making about the artist. Throughout the show, those clocks appear in different mediums - on handkerchiefs, in a video, as a part of a sculpture - as symbolic and material objects, each opening an illusory window in time to the intangible place of memories.

Marcel Proust once wrote: “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”

Atakan has incorporated flowers into her artistic vocabulary in recent years as a delicate symbol of the cycle of nature in which our bodies and consciousness are a part of its workings and appearances and as a metaphor for our own delicate memory. In the search for the threads of the distinguishable but inseparable moments of life, she often makes use of collages in an attempt to disclose time, disguised in many roles, ever-mutating the meanings attached to personal experiences and leaving the one in the act of remembering to incessantly shift their perception and judgement.

All in all, it isn’t an attempt to find a direction toward the source but to stand on the pieces surfacing above.

The show is opening on 10 December 2022 and can be viewed until 31 January 2023 at Pi Artworks İstanbul.

Pi Artworks Istanbul is open to visit on Tuesday - Saturday between 10:30 and 19:00. For detailed information, interview and images please contact [email protected] or [email protected]