TALK: Art as ritual

with Domingo Milella and Nazli Gurlek, icci, italian cultural institute, Istanbul, 14 september 2019.

In a world saturated by the incessant desire to capture meaningless images, and an overwhelming succession of emotions that don't find the route for expression, Italian photographer Domingo Milella and Turkish artist Nazli Gurlek, engage in a conversation about the meaning of art, looking for transcendence through rituality, and travelling, slowly, not across space, but time. On an excursion to some of the earliest traces of civilizations in Turkey, via Catalhoyuk's ritual paintings, this talk will set alight the enigmas of prehistoric art, question what we can learn from our primitive ancestors today, and if 'learning' per se, is the correct definition for it.

The talk will be moderated by Tara Londi, curator of Gaia Has A Thousand Names An Eco-feminist Exhibition at the Elgiz Museum, September - November 2019. The exhibition is included in the 16th edition of the Istanbul Biennial "The Seventh Continent, Art In The Anthropocene" collateral events.