Rose Related

ROSE RELATED

2023

Site specific Installation; Aluminium tubes, Black Epoxy, Embroidery on Fabric, Aluminium Wires.

Seda Hepsev conceived a site-specific project that draws on revolutionary and unconventional approach to femininity developed by the writer Hilda Doolittle (1886, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA), both in her career and specifically in the verses by the poem “The Garden”, from 1915. The will to generate a new environment, where boundaries of power structures and standardization are challenged and re - read, is created through a clever interpretation and playfulness applied to her practice and to the space. The process of proceeding by layers, already at the base of Hepsev’s poetics conceptually and practically, mirrors the essential and direct imagery of Doolittle’s writing. Simplicity spreads a multiple whirlwind of senses. Gradually entering in “Rose Related”, seen like a personification of natural elements analyzed in the poem, the onlooker is encouraged to make a personal path across the present social imperatives. Geometrical metal pieces, welcoming us at the entrance of the exhibition, reverberate the perseverance of roses thriving in the harshest of environments, among those stones, as burdens to the freedom instinct of the vital breath. The eye continues its dance caught by the dynamic position of signs in the space, until reaching pure lightness and evanescence in the artist’s textile painting. They operate as open-end stories, where universal human phases are recounted with that fluid, falling and collapsing, almost flying, attitude as Hilda references to Greek myths in her compositions. The dichotomous presences of heat and wind, respectively repression and a way to relief and change, are expressed in these artworks. They exist in the liminal space between painting, sculpture and installation, gathering threads, wires, shadows and lights all together. There is a movement, an elegant pirouette, similar to a breeze, very subtle but strong at the same time, pushing towards a renovated vision on the rich ‘Garden’ of representation and identity. All the project is permeated with a peculiar feeling: the one of freedom and indifference that Hilda Doolittle demonstrated against the confinement of her time conventions. This unconcerned behavior is not a frivolous one, but stems from self and social awareness, in order to arrive to the capacity of overflowing beyond the thinkable horizon. Seda Hepsev’s “Rose Related” is not a self-dialogue or a message directed just to the women audience. This project is an important manifesto for everyone to self - actualization.

Text by Caterina Fondelli

Photography: Beppe Giardino

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