Cemile Sahin’s art is about political events. And about how these events are told in the media. Cemile Sahin works in multimedia. [That means she combines different media in her work. Her art has different forms and modes of expression]. In her installations, Cemile Sahin combines the media of film, sculpture, text, sound and photography. [An installation is a work of art in space.] She uses archive material for her installations. [In an archive, things are collected and stored for the future.] So she starts her narrative with a true event. But then she re-interrogates the political events. She puts them in a new context. [Context is another word for context.] She chooses other focal points and puts them in the centre. In this way, she shows: how does the representation manipulate the viewers? How is the event perceived by them? These themes recur in Cemile Sahin’s work: states and militarism, land and the representation of landscape as propaganda. And the question: what consequences does propaganda have on our everyday lives? [Propaganda is a certain form of advertising. You could say: propaganda wants to influence people’s political thinking].

The focus of her installation for Kunsthalle Osnabrück is the premiere of the first part of her film series FOUR BALLADS. The short film entitled Spring has the Lausanne Treaties of 1923 as its theme. In the treaty, states were newly divided after World War I. For example, Turkey with its borders as we know them today. And it is about the conflicts that arose from this and continue to this day. This political event is related to another event. It is happening today, almost 100 years later. Namely, the conflict over water as a resource. And the use of water as an instrument of power and as a weapon of war.

The film deals with changes in the landscape and their consequences. How does the construction of huge dams change the landscape? For example, the Atatürk Dam in Northern Kurdistan? The story is told using the example of the Kurdish family Bingöl. How have their living conditions changed? And which past and present political decisions have triggered these changes? The film tells the story.

Cemile Sahin (*1990 in Wiesbaden) lives and works in Berlin. Most recently, Cemile Sahin’s work has been shown in international solo and group exhibitions, including the Lyon Biennale, Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (both 2022), Akademie der Künste Berlin (2021), Kunstverein Hamburg (2020), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig, and NS Dokumentationszentrum München (both 2019). She published the novels TAXI (2019, Korbinian Verlag) and ALLE HUNDE STERBEN (2020, Aufbau Verlag), which are an important part of her artistic practice. She is an arsviva award winner for visual arts (2020) and a recipient of the Alfred Döblin Medal (2020).

With the kind support of the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, the VR Foundation and the Friends of the Kunsthalle Osnabrück. The work A Song of Tigris & Euphrates by Cemile Sahin was produced with the kind support of Esther Schipper, Berlin Paris and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH.