In this exhibition, Caner Çoban sets Dada’s critical sardonic, attitude of Arte Povera’s and the world of dreams that surrealism has reached as the starting point. He chooses his materials among abandoned objects that he encountered on the street, left beside the garbage, along with idle objects. He tries to keep the dying alive. He renames, edits and presents these objects he has chosen, based on the associations that have been evoked on himself. He interprets his engagement with objects as the quietest state of communication. Umurbey, where his workshop is located: Darağaç, was its former name, seems to experience the present state of the past. He mostly chooses his materials from this region. In this region, efforts are in progress to keep the dying completely alive.

The past itself concentrates on memories, which is why he emphasizes the “drawer” object. His choosing an object that burns and transforms into smoke emphasizes the temporality. He also highlights the plastic material. When using plastic, which is the most useless form of oil; He realizes and uses the most useless substance that comes out of the same material as the most functional material of the age, which he sees as a despotic structure: processed into brutalist architecture. He establishs a parallel between the window frame and the notion of the tomb, so both represent the transition. 

He designed a sculpture for Gomel Square, the only square in the neighborhood where his workshop is located. He uses the car parts and scrap materials to define the characteristic in that area. People who live in the Umurbey (Darağaç) region make a living by improving already existing cars and motorcycles.

 “Elden Ele” project was realized with the joint production of 12 artists from various disciplines. The productions were transferred from one artist to another, just as in the telephone game.

The work, which started with the production of an artist, was transferred to another one it inspired. The artists had a production process for about 4 days. The works made transition from analog to digital, and physical to virtual media. The transition was reflected in the productions in an interdisciplinary way.

This project aims to increase the solidarity between the artists who produce in İzmir after the pandemic process and the last natural disaster and to encourage production.

The artists, living in the uniqueness of the neighborhood and producing with the effort to survive, co-exist once again. In its 5th year, Darağaç is taking control of the abandoned streets in their neighborhood.
Bureaucracy, exists.
All-seeing eyes, exist.
The artificial trust of being controlled, exists.
“Darağaç Exists” questions the dynamics of social power and living habits under the spotlight, promising a sterile experience to its guests.

Artists: Ahmet Yörük, Ali Cem Doğan, Ayşegül Doğan, Merey Şenocak, Caner Çoban, Cem Sonel, Cenkhan Aksoy, Çağrı Toksözlü, Demet Bilgen, Fatih Altan, Hilal Doğan, Tuğçe Akay, Zarife Arslan

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Darağaç, supported by Spaces of Culture in its fourth year, aims to present an exhibition with permanent production which is open to further transformation and experimenting in its neighborhood with the “Necessity” exhibition, the main phase of this year’s project.

In the “Necessity” process, 30 artists and 2 different working groups, produced on the themes of necessity and permanence, start off from the idea of transforming the oral history archive which Daragaç has collected for 4 years into works that left their mark in the neighborhood’s memory.

The exhibition presents an installation that is accompanied by a sound and visual performance developed on a semi-public and semi-private space, dynamic performances and installations which treat typical neighborhood traditions from different perspectives, the walls of the neighborhood which have been abandoned for a long time, works that are re-incorporated into reproduction by using dormant spaces and decayed scraps as a source.

“Necessity”, focuses on the relationship of the artist and space, the basis created by such space the context of the relationship of the artist and the community that it is a part of and permanency of the creations in the space.

During the course of the exhibition, Ebru Atilla has offered guidance to the visually impaired visitors, while Arzu Oto made audio descriptions. Also, the exhibition brochure was printed in Braille alphabet.

Darağaç contains various dynamics in its third exhibition. The dialogues that arose out of increased liveliness with the opening of the Immigration Registration Center in the neighborhood this year, provided an outlet for the participant artists.

Having obtained the information through the local history research that the first designer of Mini Cooper, Sir Alec Issigonis, was born and raised in the neighborhood, the residents of Darağaç were encouraged to do a collective work that honors the designer during the preparation of the exhibition.

Darağaç continues both to experience many collective and individual contemporary art practices and production potentials in public and private spaces within the possibilities that the neighborhood may offer and to suggest new forms to the dynamics of neighborhood life that they try to sustain.

The sequel of ‘Darağaç | meantime’ exhibition which was first held in June last year, meets the audience at the same area, Umurbey Neighborhood with the name ‘see:darağaç’. Darağaç is the former name of this quarter which was effaced in its dark past.
Along with the artists, the residents participate in the exhibition with their site- specific productions, as well. Exhibition spreading throughout the district both indoors and outdoors promises new rhetorics considering arts, neighborhood and dynamics of urban life.

This exhibition presents a space for movement where art practices are organized with the things installed and transformed by those living and producing in Umurbey Neighborhood. It reveals the unpredictable, local interactions in the neighborhood bending the system and its connection to the installations.

…We boil and rise in a close sphere, we give ourselves to display, empty words gain victory. Every time, which is a date that we identify gradually less and had turned into the destiny that carries the sphere; the things we do, are a hurricane to which our actions give certain acceleration, whether we like it or not, but our ideas can’t master it. We can’t imagine ourselves anymore, can’t carry our self-responsibility and bury ourselves to a pleasing situation, only a disaster can take us out of that, we are losing our manhood against our own reality, we are a woman against fate.

That is why our reality’s symbol is the labyrinth. Because it is the image of the labyrinth that gives us the summary of the time. The Labyrinth is the herd. We can’t meet with ourselves for we don’t have a common ground anymore. If community wasn’t the problem, would the word “communication” have become a fashion? Actually, we are a pile of loners and yet we are rolling in a mixed up manner. We are the victims of the thing that makes us alone by confounding us. *

Neighborhoods like Darağaç, Çamdibi, Gürçeşme and  Pınarbaşı have a meaning about invisible and unexpected thing for an ordinary person stuck in the city center. Business and industrial opportunities and relatively more suitable places to live can even be the essential factors in the formation of neighborhood culture. These features – or the idea of an independent workshop – make the neighborhood attractive for artists. As Güneş, Fatih, Cansu, Nazım, Inese, Brother Cem who is a Turkish classical music soloist and has a chemistry shop, and Master Hasan paint and install automobile pieces in a workshop close to the art of installation… In this sense, maybe Darağaç has a geocultural importance.

* Albert Caraco (1982). Bréviaire du chaos. P. 28-29.

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