rooted in time and space
2018, two wooden bench arms (CNC-milled plywood, 3D-scripted, white paint), 150x130 cm
2022, two hand-dyed textile with madder roots and woad, embroidery thread, 30x400 cm
Photograph from ONB Archive, 1938
In the work rooted in time and space for the Wien Museum Musa, the park bench becomes a projection surface for an exchange about ideologies, architecture and the politics of the city. Where there are usually tags, scribbles and stickers, this bench is embroidered with fragments of Austrian history. The work plays with the collective visual memory that subversively makes its way into public space.
This bench design from the photo is seen when one takes a journey from Vienna to İstanbul – faked or reproduced from the original design- throughout the WWI until today. Doubled in size and made out of wood – still carrying many qualities of a bench, yet fails in its function as a sitting element – like history, though it still becomes an archive, like collecting memories and stories of people who sit, take breath, cry and so on.
The bench arms are covered with 4 meter long textile, where embroidered figures from Austrian history – of which the narratives are not inclusionary - can be found: Epic symbol of Red Vienna - the tower like symbol of Karl-Marx-Hof, figures from the Ephesos Museum that shows excavated objects from Ephesus/Turkey that were brought to Austria; stolen/lost witch sculpture from the jewish Viennese sculptor Theresa Feodorovna Ries, barbaric visualization of the Ottoman’s during Siege of Vienna, and many more.