Nancy Atakan: A Community of Lines

Pi Artworks Istanbul is pleased to present Nancy Atakan’s solo exhibition A Community of Lines curated by Asli Seven between the dates 19 September – 21 October 2017. This is the inaugural exhibition of Pi Artworks Istanbul’s new space in Karakoy.

Bringing together Nancy Atakan’s latest embroidered works on linen and felt, A Community of Lines interweaves the most subjective and localized accounts of female lineage and transmission with broader historical narratives around the role attributed to women in the development of Turkish modernity. Unfocusing from closed frames and grand narratives, the artist emphasizes threads of life stories and lines of intergenerational transmission, revealing unwritten histories as anti-totalizing forces that entangle and unravel through several knots.
In line with Atakan’s previous work and research and by combining the Western tradition of samplers with elements from Turkish needlework, the exhibition ties autobiographical elements to wider historical shifts affecting the education of women in both Western and Turkish contexts of modernization. How do we draw the lines between our life stories, stitching together what we’ve inherited from the past and what we transmit to the future? 
The exhibition takes as its point of departure an invitation by Nancy Atakan to women in her family and circle of friends to collaborate by sharing memories and family photographs. The resulting needlework objects presented in the form of wrapped gifts in the exhibition attest to an ongoing process of exchange and collaboration, a community of lines beyond the exhibition’s time and space.

Nancy Atakan, Memories Series (Aunt Suzan #2), 2016, linen, digital print, needlework,  37 x 37 cm
The American born Istanbul based artist, teacher, art historian and art critic, Nancy Atakan, has been an active figure in the Istanbul arts scene since 1969. Originally a painter, in the early 1990's she switched to a multimedia approach encompassing photography, installation, text, digital printing, neon and video. Believing that the art arena is a place where individuals can experiment to develop alternative ways to live and interact with each other, in 2007 she co-founded with artist Volkan Aslan, a non-profit artist initiative and project space called 5533. Sustaining this idealistic viewpoint, her practice involves experimentation, research, collaboration, and dialogue. In her work, she often incorporates autobiographical materials, references to the history and culture of Istanbul as well as gender politics, globalization, language and femininity related concepts. She has been a Pi Artworks artist since 2009.
Nancy Atakan, b. 1946. Her exhibitions include A Room of Our Own, Ark Kültür, Istanbul, Turkey (2017); Triebsand Online Exhibition Space, Volume #2, Zurich, Switzerland (2017); Unfold, Arte, Ankara, Turkey (2017); Whose Art History, Uniq Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2017); Letter from Istanbul, Pi Artworks London, UK (2017); Sporting Chances (solo), Pi Artworks London, UK (2016); Small Faces, Large Sizes, Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul, Turkey (2015); Stay With Me, Weserburg Museum, Bremen, Germany (2015); 40 videos from 40 years of video art in Turkey, 25th Ankara International Film Festival, Goethe Institute, Turkey (2014); Me, Myself and I: ME as a Dilemma, Cer Modern, Ankara, Turkey (2013); Places of Memory-Fields of Vision, Contemporary Art Center, Thessaloniki, Greece (2012); Dream and Reality-Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey, Istanbul Modern, Turkey (2011) and Istanbul Next Wave, Akademie der Kunst, Berlin, Germany (2010).
Asli Seven is an independent curator and writer based between Istanbul and Paris. She is currently a researcher in the doctoral program “Document and Contemporary Art” at the European School of Visual Arts in France, a member of AICA Turkey, a collaborator with Independent Curators International and an alumnus of École du Magasin.