18 March 2012

"Somewhere In The Middle of Two, Southwest of One, And North of The Other": Windcatchers of Glasgow, Istanbul and Dubai


Deniz Uster’s homeland of Turkey is a mediatory culture deriving mainly from an oral history, which can be traced back to Middle Asia, Anatolia, and the Islamic Middle East. As an artist who collaborates with the language of epics and storytelling, she discovered that no tradition is original; which suggests that influence is an essential tool in the construction of culture.

The distinctive windcatchers of Bastakiya could be regarded as one of the clearest and oldest references to this ‘cultural crossbreeding’ in Dubai with its Persian influence. They are also one of the earliest basic mechanisms in Dubai that were built and expected to fulfill a specific function.

Utilising reverse functionality as her methodology, Uster constructs three windcatchers dedicated to Istanbul, Glasgow and Dubai, the cities that have  welcomed her and shaped her identity and practice; undressing them from their ‘capturing’ function, and turning them into ‘disseminating’ monuments. The kinetic components of each tower fortifies the idea of influx, transition and even failure if necessary. Furthermore, spreading respectively scent, humidity and sound; these towers house inner mechanisms as well as carrying a ‘vagrant’ look on the exterior.

Uster also strives to utilise remnants of construction materials to build her towers in order to explore the fabric and the economy of Art Dubai. She seeks to question the idea of  ‘reusing’ and to propose a form of ‘opposite alchemy’ that plays with the hierarchy of values we place on objects.

1 comment:

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