< <

Nevin Aladağ

Colors, 2008

11 lamps, designed by Poul Henningson, colored nylon stockings
Site-specific

In Nevin Aladag's piece Colors we encounter colour on multiple levels. Phenomenologically we are confronted with a set of lamps whose luminosity and appearance was masked by coloured tights. Through the title alone (and its North American spelling), the artist embeds this work in a discourse around skin-colours and politics. Already in 1952 Ralpf Ellison decries the social invisibility through a "wrong" colour of skin in his novel "Invisible Man". Moreover, Colors points to Dennis Hopper's movie "Colors" from 1988, which can be seen as a sociological study on colour in a metaphorical and literal sense: here gang life and graffiti are at stake. Furthermore, Aladag uses lamps that refer to Danish design icon Poul Henningsen's classics and makes them undergo a sculptural and gender loaded alteration. Colors brings therewith various readings of colouration together, on an epistemological, sociological and aesthetic level that let us question. (Excerpt of a text by Nico Anklam)

*1972 Van, Turkey