Actually / Truths and Lies About the Exhibition, 2015
Text-based interactive installation
Produced for her first solo exhibition entitled “Your Last Chance To Visit Studio!” at Galerist Studio, Actually/Truths and Lies about the Exhibition takes the form of a participatory text that oscillates between confession, fiction, and self-mythologizing.
The work consists of a series of statements about the exhibition, its production, and the artist’s own position within it—ranging from factual details and personal anecdotes to speculation, humor, and contradiction. Viewers are invited to read these statements and determine whether they are true or false by placing green or red stickers beside them. Borrowed from the gallery’s sales system—where green indicates available works and red marks those sold—these markers are displaced from their economic function and reassigned to the act of interpretation.
Drawing loosely on the structure of a familiar game—two truths and a lie—the installation destabilizes the authority of the exhibition narrative. The repeated use of “actually” both asserts and undermines credibility, producing a text that continuously negotiates sincerity and fabrication. Personal reflections, references to artistic influences, institutional conditions, and moments of doubt coexist without resolution.
Rather than revealing a fixed truth, the work exposes how meaning is constructed through participation, projection, and belief. In doing so, it mirrors the broader dynamics of the exhibition itself, where authorship, value, and legitimacy remain contingent and collectively produced.
Selected translation // 4- This exhibition is based on a concept called ‘la perruque/wig’, in Michel de Certeau’s book entitled "Practices of Everyday Life’" "La perruque" describes the process of a worker working for him/herself whilst being their place of employment and apparently performing their duties towards their employers as expected. Nothing of value (physically speaking) is stolen; instead the worker is taking back his/her time. Accordingly I produced all the works in the exhibition at Galerist, during working hours.
Selected translation // 6- Making references to artists and writers on my work reassures me and makes me feel safe. 8- I actually made the work called ‘I wish I was Serkan Özkaya’ with Eda. I didn’t put Eda’s name on the credits because it would have been weird to call the piece ‘We Wish We Were Serkan Özkaya.’ I don’t think Eda would like to be Serkan Özkaya anyways…
Selected translation // 9- I don’t actually want to be Serkan Özkaya either. 10- Or Gavin Turk. 11- Neither Andy Warhol. 12- And definitely not Jorgen Leth. 13- But I do really admire you Baldessari! 15- I’m not actually a good liar. Everything i say here is true.
Selected translation // 21- At one point during the process of putting together this exhibition I decided I wasn’t actually an artist, which made me wonder if other artists question also their artistry or if only believers become artists.