Attending the Void

DEPO, Tütün Deposu, Lüleci Hendek Caddesi No.12, Tophane, Istanbul

Dilek Winchester’s solo exhibition Attending the Void consists of a site-specific installation with the same name that expands through the ground floor of Depo. Following meetings and correspondence with 89 people between May and September 2019, 81 pedestals that are borrowed from 44 different locations come together in the exhibition space. These pedestals that came from 44 different art institutions and organisations including museums, exhibition and research centers, galleries, artists’ initiatives, not-for-profit art spaces, art initiatives without permanent spaces, as well as boards and bodies organizing student exhibits, are included in the exhibition representing the public space the arts create.

In her conceptual works, Winchester focuses on subjects such as language, translation, alphabet reforms, theater, oral history and the expressions of emotions. The artist, whose practice facilitates participation and collaboration, is this time inviting the artists and art professionals from her own network to participate through the acts of borrowing/giving. These pedestals marked by their own exhibition memories and waiting to be used in other future exhibits, collected from different art spaces in Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakır and İzmir not only serve as the memory of dozens of past exhibitions as the display units reflecting the variety of artworks exhibited upon them, but also bring to Depo the possibility, potential and expectation for dozens of exhibitions to come, to be imagined or to be worked towards with the voids they carry.