B.LA Art Foundation and Women without Borders are pleased to present Melike Kara's new exhibition "dayê, dayê" in their new and temporary gallery space in Vienna's first district, also marking B.LA Art Foundation's first ever online exhibition.
The Cologne-based artist Melike Kara, who was born to a Kurdish-Alevi family, showcases a number of paintings and a video, accompanied by a poem, that circle around notions of belonging, identity, memory and heritage.
For her exhibition at B.LA Art Foundation, which Melike Kara titled "dayê, dayê" meaning "mother, mother" in Zazaki - a language mainly spoken by Alevi Kurds from the Dersim region - , the artist pays tribute to her own roots, to past generations and especially her mother and grandmothers, who play a pivotal role in Kara's life and work.
In her deeply personal video work "Emine" (2018), Melike Kara portrays her grandmother, her everyday life and the struggle in losing her own identity in the face of her Alzheimer's disease. In doing so, Kara thematizes not only a confrontation with the loss that goes hand in hand with this disease, but also how certain core memories are deeply rooted in our memories - touchingly depicted in the grandmother's rendition of the lullaby "dayê, dayê", that her mother passed on to her and that she then sang for her own children.
Melike Kara's work is a deep dive into topics that affect all of us: our own roots and identity and the question of how much our own past influences our present moment.
Kara questions how these experiences are altered and magnified amidst forced displacement and when leaving one's homeland behind, when experiencing the persecution of one's culture and the resulting collective pain. Finally however, also how to keep one's heritage alive through oral renditions, through memory and through passing it on from generation to generation.
In her latest series of paintings, Kara delves into conceptual explorations rooted in her personal identity and the intricate narratives and experiences of the Kurdish diaspora. Through a blend of form and content, the artist articulates the profound resonance of - fragmented - memories and ancestral heritage: How much of our own past and our ancestor's past do we carry within ourselves?
The exhibition will be on view from November 10th-December 22nd.
Curator: Talina Lun Bauer
B.LA's unique mission continues with this exhibition: to present the work of women artists while donating all its proceeds to the international NGO Women without Borders, which was founded in 2001 by Dr. Edit Schlaffer and which engages women globally to end cycles of structural, psychological and physical violence.