Performance
March 2, 2018 / 15:00
Pera Museum is presenting a month-long durational performance: A Handful of Rights by artist Aslı Uludağ. Inspired by Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection exhibition, and taking place over a month in the exhibition gallery of Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters, the performance A Handful of Rights revisits the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on its 70th anniversary.
During this multi-phase performance, one by one the words contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are erased from the Turkish dictionary, and are then translated into a numerical value based on their listing in this dictionary with participation from the gallery audience. These numbers are converted to the weight of wheat, reflecting an interpretation of the collective and settled lifestyle, proposed by this Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the last stage of the performance, the artist aims to calculate the physical weight of the declaration based on the weight of the wheat.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed by the United Nations in 1948. Composed of thirty articles, this declaration provides the frame for equal rights, freedoms, and lifestyle for all people in the world regardless of their religion, language, race or gender. As the performance deconstructs and scrutinizes the declaration, the artist reinterprets this important text into various aspects, forms and concepts. The performance, in search for the lost meaning of words through a poetic and absurd approach, ironically takes place in the court of the ambassadors from the Ottoman era, whose portraits are displayed in the Orientalist Paintings Collection exhibition of the museum.
Aslı Uludağ’s A Handful of Rights performance is presented on the exhibition floor of the exhibition “Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters” compiled from Suna and Inan Kıraç Foundation Orientalist Paintings Collection.
A firm believer in the idea that a collection needs to be upheld at least by four generations and comparing this continuity to a relay race, Nahit Kabakcı began creating the Huma Kabakcı Collection from the 1980s onwards. Today, the collection can be considered one of the most important and outstanding examples among the rare, consciously created, and long-lasting ones of its kind in Turkey.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Pera Museum invites artist Benoît Hamet to reinterpret key pieces from its collections, casting a humourous eye over ‘historical’ events, both imagined and factual.
Ali Sami is born in Rusçuk in 1866, and moves to İstanbul. Because his family is registered in the Beylerbeyi quarter of Üsküdar, Ali Sami is also called Üsküdarlı Ali Sami. He graduates from the Mühendishane-i Berri-i Hümayun in 1866 and becomes a teacher of painting and photography at the school.
Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 - 19:00
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The museum is closed on Mondays.
On Wednesdays, the students can
visit the museum free of admission.
Full ticket: 200 TL
Discounted: 100 TL
Groups: 150 TL (minimum 10 people)
