The Stones Talk

Oscillating between truth and fiction, Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s work frequently collaborates with different disciplines for replications, reproductions, and enactments, signifying the things that are neglected or ignored by representations that rely on official discourses and assumptions. The artist brought the installation "The Stones Talk" to life for her solo exhibition at Arter in 2013, based on 71 artefacts discovered in various archaeological excavation sites in Turkey. These objects were deemed either “insignificant” or “incomplete”, and thus classified as “study pieces” by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Çavuşoğlu produced replicas of the “study pieces” she chose, and “completed” them for this installation. Though she relies on the classical methods of archaeology, she is not bound by them. She uses a fragment to build a rough draft of the whole, yet opens this method up to new associations and visual possibilities; she combines the study pieces with new shapes of her own design, made from different materials like ceramic, rubber, epoxy, plexiglass, felt, volcanic stone, leather and foam. "The Stones Talk" highlights the potential that archaeological remains considered worthless by official historiography offer in questioning how historical narratives and meanings are produced.

"What Time Is It?", exhibition view, Arter, 2019.