Artist: Gönül Nuhoğlu
Curated by Irina Batkova
In her artistic practice, Gönül Nuhoğlu explores the particularities of human nature as a systemic generator of upheavals within the structures of political systems. In the exhibition “Non nobis solum nati sumus”(1), the artist approaches the world as a site of paradoxical oppositions. A puzzle of human faces, alongside everyday objects that directly or metaphorically visualize the traces of war, addresses the invisible boundaries imposed by the repressive instruments of political systems. These boundaries produce dysfunction at every level of human relations, problematizing our connection to others and generating tensions within multicultural societies that ultimately lead to bloodshed and violent conflict.
Within the framework of this working concept, language emerges as an additional element, entering into specific relationships with the visual material. The exhibition title, “Non nobis solum nati sumus”, is a fragment of a maxim from one of Cicero’s most influential philosophical works, which articulates the Stoic ideal of cosmopolitanism: “non nobis solum nati sumus; ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici.”(2) At its core lies the conviction that all human beings are part of a single organism and should contribute to the common good through the exchange of acts of kindness.
In this project, the interplay between the public and the private, the empathetic fragility of lived experience, and the cold narcissism of power simultaneously attract and repel. This tension constitutes a fundamental characteristic of the social body: its capacity to generate both life-affirming and destructive instincts that coexist in an unstable balance. Gönül Nuhoğlu persistently puts this balance to the test, and her sculptures present a surreal world in which doubt and hope coexist at the threshold between dream and reality.
Footnotes
1. “Not for ourselves alone are we born.”
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2. Note: English translation of Cicero (De Officiis): “Humans have been created for the sake of others of their kind, indeed, to benefit one another as much as possible.”
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