BROKEN MIRROR & RELIANCE…
October, 2025
In 1949, immediately after World War II, Adorno said that writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. The year he made these remarks was also the final year of Adorno's refuge in the United States, where he, a Jew himself, sought refuge from the barbarity of the European war, which had descended into massacre and eventually genocide.
The intervening years have presented new generations with a world of recurring massacres and genocides, proving that history is not very instructive for us humans. Of course, we did not yet know whether the war that began back then would last this long.
So much so that, as preparations for our solo exhibitions were being completed in October 2023, the impact of the war in our works, and the cracks opened by the genocide in the hidden layers, cast a deeper and more visible darkness over our illustrations.
Remembering Adorno's words, for two years, our hands, hearts, minds, and souls were turning within the wheels of daily life, yet we were constantly filled with the images, stories, and sounds of new massacres and genocides that continued in the background like a sorrowful melody.
In October 2025, when we decided it was time to speak out, a global fleet of hope set sail for Gaza.
Although Adorno rightly stated that human barbarism had become the end of words, it was still possible to see that courage, hope, and understanding could still be put into action for humanity.
We, who chose to speak the language of art and images, wanted to speak and share with you, so that silence would end.
To remember that silence is another form of barbarism…
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Özge SAYILGAN Assoc. Prof. Dr. Aslı İGİT
Özge SAYILGAN's personal exhibition BROKEN MIRROR and Aslı IGIT's personal exhibition RELIANCE, which opened on September 29, 2025, with the participation of our Rector Prof. Dr. Gülfettin ÇELİK, can be visited in the foyer of the Ziraat Bank Building on the North Campus of Istanbul Medeniyet University until October 10, 2025.
