Hatice Pınarbaşi

L’amitié: ce tremble. 2024
Friendship : That Shiver, That Aspen

Crac Alsace, Altkirch

Collective show curated by Claire Le Restif, Sébastien Martins,
Ana Mendoza Aldana, Richard Neyroud et Elfi Turpin

Hatice Pinarbaşi’s work is, in a way, both a place and a roof: the installation consists of four paintings, *Unut Flying to Umut*, like four walls, and a floor constructed from a mix of rugs illuminated here and there by lights—like suns still green, like armed fireflies. The process begins with salvaged household fabrics and restaurant tablecloths, which are soaked in iron-rich, healing water, stretched over life-sized frames, and altered through a process of subtraction and negative space before being sewn—or, in other places, patched. Although abstract at first glance, figuration silently overflows from them. From a distance, clouds of color and spirals appear, like a ribbon seeming to fly in the wind or a musical score woven from one canvas to the next. Already, one can sense the imprints and splotches left by the spray bottle and the airbrush. The closer the viewer gets and the more the eye is drawn in, the more the details come into focus—the traces of hands and eyelets, or even the playful tongue peeking out between two stitches.
Musical notes, birds, and other small animals—such as a snail here—are rendered using pastels, pencil, oil paint, and makeup. Finally, numbers, letters, and pictogram-like symbols stand out, as if signifying a certain language waiting to be deciphered.
Then, a word becomes legible: “Unut,” the Turkish word for “forgetting,” which shifts and, further on, becomes “Umut,” meaning “hope.” What fades does not disappear. In the painting, what fades dances, animated by memory and a spiritual gestures, an animistic mindset inherited from the artist’s Kurdish nomadic origins.

The same healing and meditative approach guides the creation of the poetic platform from which, within the installation, one can contemplate the paintings: the rugs were selected for their pictorial motifs (geometry, color, the presence of animals) and were salvaged, burned, and carved out.
When placed together, they invite the public to sit on them and to place poetry or worry, respectively, on or under the rug. On the floor, they form a map, a territory where no one would be a stranger.
Attention is paid to the small—even the minuscule—through the concept of a model. Insects are also brought into the work—those we scarcely notice in the world around us, whether they are worms on the ground or fireflies in the air.
The phrasing and variation of the title, in the style of the language of birds, directs the installation simultaneously toward a natural space—“my Earth”—an artificial and reproduced one—“model”—and a spiritual one—“my quest.” A space of utopia and empathy, a sanctuary of humility and a protected haven of hospitality—a place to dwell and take root—the work replaces the clamor of words with birdsong, which resonates as a prayer for freedom.

Unut flying to Umut (du turc: l’oubli vole vers l’espoir)
A series of paintings created with a garden hose on restaurant tablecloths soaked in iron-rich, healing water; acrylic, stitching, foundation, ink, pencil, pastel, and glued embroidery; 180x120 cm

Unut flying to Umut is a diptych created by soaking white tablecloths in the iron-rich waters of a healing spring in Clermont-Ferrand. She applied the same gestures of care and attention that might be given to a sick body seeking a remedy in the mineral-rich waters of these springs. She painted in negative on the wet canvas using a garden hose, washing away the pigments as she went. Finally, the artist glued on embroidery and stitched the canvas back together, as if closing the painful scars on a person’s skin. She envisions “sewing as healing, painting as a remedy.” With a grandfather who was a healer and a nomad, I borrow familiar, passed-down gestures to infuse them into my pictorial language.”

Overview: left youri Johnson, Right: Hatice Pinarbasi

Hugo Ferreto, toit tableau

CRAC Alsace, Altkirch

https://artviewer.org/friendship-that-shiver-that-aspen-at-crac-alsace/

https://www.cracalsace.com/fr/669_exposition-l-amitie-ce-tremble

https://aoc.media/critique/2024/06/13/complicites-artistiques-sur-lamitie-ce-tremble-au-credac-et-au-crac-alsace/

Credit photo @Aurélien Mole.

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