Until It’s Hard To Tell
Drawings | Animation | Installation
by Ceren Oykut
Kommunales Kino im Alten Wiehrebahnhof
Freiburg / DE
04.07.2025 / 26.07.2025
The scenes Ceren Oykut created with pastel and charcoal gradually evolve into a narrative, and eventually into an animated film. Until It’s Hard To Tell, presented at Kommunales Kino im Alten Wiehrebahnhof in Freiburg, offers an in-between form where drawing resonates across temporal and spatial dimensions; where a literary narrative accompanies both the film and the installation; and where cinematography intersects with the exhibition practice.
In this exhibition, Ceren Oykut engages with a form of literature not confined by history or geopolitics – one that resonates with the oral traditions of pre-literate societies. At the core of her method lies a commitment to hearing the unspoken, uncovering what is hidden, and exploring the place of individual experience within the collective unconscious.
During this process, one of the themes that shaped the hybrid nature of her drawing practice became more pronounced: Levante. Derived from French, the word means “to rise” and refers to the direction or place of the sunrise – the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. This region, shaped by the convergence of ancient cultures and vibrant exchanges, provided fertile ground for Oykut to blend multiple languages, create hybrid characters, observe fragmented images, and construct stories.
In the winter of 2024, Ceren Oykut turned off the lights in her studio and began conducting “active imagination” sessions in the dark. During these sessions, she produced numerous drawings using rolls of paper, fabric, charcoal, and soft pastels. Over time, the tearing, cutting, burning, and perforating of these drawings – along with the traces and residues they left on other surfaces – led her to the creation of characters, the writing of stories, and eventually to the animation process. The characters that emerged were born from the language of drawing; they come from a subjective, surreal, and fragmented realm. They refuse to represent any specific time or place – or even if they didn’t, they would still exist beyond the boundaries of representation. They reveal their own memories and collectively build a space: Sırlı Hek’yat.
Sırlı Hek’yat is a fictional land of narratives – a place unknown to anyone, absent from maps, where words move freely between languages, and where fragments, holes, and burn marks transform into beings. It operates on the threshold between reality and imagination, serving as a representation of an alternative memory space that resists official historical narratives and nation-state constructs.
Characters inhabiting this land – such as Gaip Nein, Ayintyflós, Serrampante, Kara Vard, THRI, KOOSH, Zilammast, and Loch Pieton – carry voices not only from personal realms but also from the collective unconscious. These beings are unplaced, unanchored to the world, dwell in holes, choose not to harm, resist internal decay, and speak with a strength born of fragility. As they attempt to transform themselves, they survive through their capacity to carry what has been. This narrative, which also serves as a personal oral archive, speaks in a fractured universal tongue -belonging to no one and to nowhere, marked by its gaps and distortions.
Until It’s Hard To Tell positions itself at the threshold where narrative begins to unravel, refusing fixed structures and embracing a nomadic mode of storytelling. Instead of adhering to a single space, time, or form, the exhibition proposes a fluid and multilayered way of narration. The line moves between paper rolls, fabric surfaces, projected light, and sounds – creating a hybrid space where all elements blend, overlap, and dissolve into one another.
The animation film, emerging from within the installation, assumes the role of a thinking practice, a method of documentation, and a vehicle for transmission. It transforms the installation’s physical and ephemeral nature into the portable and reproducible form of cinema. This shift in medium and translation of memory does not fixate the nomadic nature of the installation. On the contrary, it sustains its relation to oral culture – through a dispersed yet carrying structure of memory. The resulting animated film does not directly narrate the story of the installation, but rather archives the memory of line, sound, and darkness. Working alongside a lived silence, it transforms voids into shadows and joins the dynamic circulation of anonymous images.
This exhibition approaches drawing not merely as a form of expression, but as a gesture that engages with what emerges in darkness – the unwanted, the unseen, and the unheard. And precisely because of this: Until It’s Hard To Tell does not aim to tell a story, but to open a space for what cannot be told.
Curators: Neriman bayram & Ceren Oykut, Text: Ceren Oykut, Photos: Ceren Oykut & Albert Josef Schmit, Editor: Neriman Bayram, Graphic Design: Kaner Thompson. Agentur für zeitgemäße Kommunikation, Tech Team: KAI Dead Chickens, Marcel Kaufmann, Public Relations: Rosaly Magg
With kind support by Guzzoni-Federer Stiftung für Zusammenleben und Solidarität and Volksbank Freiburg
Until It’s Hard To Tell
Film Program & Performances
Curated by Neriman Bayram & Ceren Oykut
Kommunales Kino im Alten Wiehrebahnhof, Freiburg
04.07.2025 / 26.07.2025
Poster design: Kaner Thompson. Agentur für zeitgemäße Kommunikation
Film screening: Dead Chickens, eine dokumentarische Kunst-Komödie by Malika Ziouech, photography by Albert Josef Schmit
Performance: KAI Dead Chickens, 04/07/2025, KOKI Freiburg, photography by Albert Josef Schmit
Poster design: Kaner Thompson. Agentur für zeitgemäße Kommunikation
Film screening & Performance: La Voyage Dans Le Lune by Georges Méliès accompanied by Fezaya Firar 26/07/2025, KOKI Freiburg, photography by Albert Josef Schmit
Performance: Black On Black, 26/07/2025, KOKI Freiburg
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