Life in the UK / Balance of Probabilities, currently on show in Castlefield Gallery, holds the high honour of the only (ever) Turkish entrants displayed as part of Asia Triennial Manchester. Istanbul-based artists Didem Özbek and Osman Bozkurt delved into the frustrating throes of visa application for their Manchester debut.
The exhibition details the processes of application to travel, specifically from Turkey, and in doing so addresses issues of freedom, movement and displacement. The gallery has thusly been remade in the mould of a visa application centre, including the street-facing façade, transforming the gallery into unrecognisable dull commercial camouflage.
Upon entering each visitor must go through a security check and be issued a ticket to the waiting room where the exhibition begins. The effect is possibly similar to the confusion and bureaucracy of real visa applicants. I couldn’t say for sure, though, given that at the end of my queue an art exhibition awaited, and in terms of entering unfamiliar territory this probably doesn’t quite equate with emigrating. The visitor, ie. me, is indeed left feeling out of context with the art gallery and part of an office cattle market. However, as a simulation of the real reality the experience falls short.
The gallery is small, and this exhibition cleverly utilizes all surfaces; the viewer is literally enclosed by the pieces. Upon walking down the stairs Didem Özbek’s ‘Dream Trip’ trips you up. The work is made up of luggage lined up against the walls, posters of foreign countries hung above and on the floor is a map of the world reduced to show only those countries in which people are able to cross borders freely. In a glass case to the side she has gathered the four types of Turkish passports which roughly translate as a metaphor for the license to travel freely undercut by the resultant effect of restriction.
The rest of the exhibition is comprised of film and images filling the walls; such as Osman Bozkurt’s ‘Collection #2/11’, a collection of passport photos with the faces cut out by state officers. The artist has classified and categorized them by physical features and has displayed them in insect cases. Photographs of the interiors of visa application centres create a disconcerting double-headed hall of mirrors; dull photos of dull rooms in a counterfeit-dull room.
Although the exhibition concept is positively thriving with sociological and topical issues such as human rights, whether this includes the right to travel, ownership and identity, the exhibition as a whole fell somehow flat. The theory was there, the circle came full: that an exhibition built around travel had travelled all the way to greet us in sunny Manchester (I presume with a visa). And yet inside the circle it was strangely empty, in my humble opinion, a vacuum not quite going the distance.
