Father’s Timeline

The concepts of rhythm and measurement lie at the foundation of Cevdet Erek’s works and site-specific installations, which investigate the units, structures, and forms that guide our perception of space and time. In 2007, Erek produced his first ruler, which begins with the year of his birth. Since then, he has continued to make rulers to mark and interpret successive events and relationships drawn from a wide spectrum that ranges from the temporal units of day, night, week, and year, to individual and social turning points, and to historical ruptures like coups and wars.
“Father’s Timeline”, one of Erek’s first works to deal with the concept of time, explores collective history through critical personal turning points. The artist first draws a line beginning from his father’s date of birth, and asks his father to indicate important dates in his life on this ruler. This timeline forms an individual history, successively aligning numerous births, deaths, occupational turning points, and translocations, while also bearing witness to the political history of Turkey.