Ordinaire Blau

Former Istanbul artists in residence from Austria Iris Andraschek exhibits her work from Turkey at Galerie Raum mit Licht in Vienna

until December 3, 2016.

‘Sapun Ghar’ Iris Andraschek, Galerie Raum mit Licht, 2016 © Christoph Fuchs

Iris Andraschek is showing a series of drawings at Galerie Raum mit Licht for the European Month of Photography that circle around the possibility of accurately representing reality — or the impossibility of doing so.

She has developed her exhibition project in Istanbul during her residency this year. The drawings and the photos show people who have fled to Turkey from Aleppo, as well as their current surroundings and on the basis of their history as migrants.

Fine-lined renditions of striking faces and heads are meticulously and realistically, as it were, drawn on semi-opaque foil. The artist has emphasised the subjects’ distinctive features with lettering or patterns, so concealing the original faces. On a second drawing of each on another sheet, she lays the heads around a dense, delicately worked mesh of ornaments and arabesques, in the stylised foliage of which sentences from conversations with those portrayed are interwoven. This process of covering/revealing is repeated in a number of photographs. The photographs also have embroidered raw silk cloths tacked onto them, as do some of the drawings on display.

For this exhibition project she traveld as well to Gaziantep – South East Turkey –  and visited a soap factary where migrants from Syria are producing the typical Aleppo soap. Here she made as well conversations with the producers of the soap about their journey and histroy.

Guided Tour, Saturday 19.11.16 2 p.m. with Iris Andraschek and Lucas Cuturi

Galerie Raum mit Licht in Vienna