Madlen Hirtentreu at Çanakkale Biennial

The new work is a site-specific sculpture consisting of a ceramic head, the body structure is created from a combination of steel and used car parts found on site.

“It is about a ghostly figure appearing in the future who is looking for the fate of the city of Troy buried under the desert”, says the artist.

For decades, the Turkish government has banned the excavation of the city of Troy and has created fields over the city where any act of digging or probing with a metal detector is prohibited. If a citizen is looking for something, he can be punished, and if found, the place is buried under an ever deeper layer. The city of Troy is located in the middle of Çanakkale.

The 9th edition of the Çanakkale Biennial, which will be organized by CABININ in autumn 2024, aims to position Çanakkale as a unique space in the Euro-Asian and Mediterranean-Black Sea contemporary art and culture ecosystem. The conceptual frameworks created combine the cultural, historical and social values specific to the city of Çanakkale with the intersection of current issues on a global scale. By inviting artists and art experts from different parts of the world to this context, conditions are created for new productions and collaborations.

As part of the 9th Çanakkale Biennial, which will open its doors on 4 October, Deniz Erbaş, co-director of the biennial, will develop a curatorial collaboration with Ulrika Flink (Sweden) with the support of Space’s of Culture International Co-Production Fund. Flink will realize a public art project with international artists for the Korfmann Library.

https://www.canakkalebienali.com/?l=en

The artist thanks:
Jaan-August Viirand, EKA Ceramics Department, Villu Mustkivi