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The Spectacle Of The Everyday, Xth Biennale de Lyon
curated by Hou Hanru
Musée D’art Contemporain, Lyon, France
06-09-2009/03-01-2010
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Please, Help Yourself, view from the exhibition, acrylic on wall, 17x5m, Musée D’art Contemporain, Lyon, 2009
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Ceren Oykut’s contribution has been directly applied to the museum walls like a giant storyboard. Please, Help Yourself is a tangle of drawings telling a tale with an apocalyptic ending. A mix of graphic novel, fresco and wall decoration, the work is marked by the way each character is handled with enormous care and a skill mingling popular and classic culture. A native of Istanbul, Oykut takes her images from the subtle chaos of everyday life in a city of heightened contrasts and life on the razor’s edge. She is above all interested in the “little people”, those on the verge of exclusion: newspaper vendors, glue-sniffers, the unemployed and vagrant animals: groups which, while not exclusively symbolising poverty, reveal the sheer richness of everyday life. Working in direct contact with her subjects in very different contexts, Oykut compares her own life and experiences with what she sees in other host cities – in this case Lyon – and so contributes to ongoing dialogue and the fostering of new forms of social mixity. / François Saint Pierre, Directeur du Centre de photographie de Lectoure
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ceren oykut 