Stones to Throw

In recent years, a large number of children from Ahmet Öğüt’s home village of Diyarbakir have been arrested for throwing stones at armed military forces. Thousands of minors, some as young as twelve, are being tried and prosecuted as adults under the country’s counterterrorism laws.

In Stones to Throw (2011), Öğüt decorates stones with motifs from traditional nose art, a phenomenon popularised during the First and Second World Wars. The painted motifs on the outside of aircrafts anecdotally assisted in the identification of ‘friendlies’, but perhaps were also a way of alleviating the destructive actions of the fighters. By painting the stones in this manner, Öğüt reinforms their function. Adorned with images of shark’s teeth and missiles ready to fire, the stones generate new life – a metaphor of resistance against oppression, highlighting a battle of the small against the big.

Artist Statement:

Stones to Throw is an installation that has been extended to public space. I depart from nose art, the decorative paintings on the fuselage of military aircrafts, which can be seen as a form of aircraft graffiti. I painted ten stones with the same paintings seen on airplanes. During the show at Kunsthalle Lissabon, nine of the stones were sent one by one to Diyarbakir, my hometown, and left in the street. What remained at the end of the show was only one stone, ten plinths, and photos of the other stones located in the streets of Diyarbakir as well as the FedEx bills documenting their travel. At Kunsthalle Lissabon it was a process; visitors witnessed stones disappearing from the exhibition one by one. I decided not to send the last stone; it became the physical documentation of the other stones that disappeared in the streets of Diyarbakir.

Employing a wide range of media including painting, photography, drawing, sculpture and video, Öğűt often uses simple gestures that reference social and political changes and controls within his culture and community. Through the use of irony, the artist delivers his message in a humorous and accessible way.

The Castle of Vooruit (2011) was a re-creation of René Magritte’s 1959 floating rock, Le Chateau des Pyrénées. Referencing the connection between the past and present, the accessible and the inaccessible, the work was made from a gigantic helium balloon and featured a replication of the Vooruit building – a cooperative where working-class people of Ghent gathered for festive occasions. The balloon flew 11 metres above the ground and was part of an outdoor installation for the Belgian art festival, TRACK.

Öğüt studied in the Fine Art Faculty at Hacettepe University, Ankara, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in 2003. He completed his Master of Culture and Science at Yildiz Tenik University, Istanbul, in 2006. Öğüt has been involved in many international art exhibitions, including Performa 13, New York; 7th Liverpool Biennial (2012); 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); 4th Moscow Biennale (2011); 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); and 5th Berlin Biennale (2008). He has held several solo exhibitions around the world, including ‘When the axis of the Hamster’s wheel is lodged inside Sisyphus’ boulder’, Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina (2013); ‘Ahmet Öğüt’, Itinerant/Protocinema, New York (2013); ‘Or Whistle Spontaneously’, Delfina Foundation, London (2013); and ‘This exhibition’s factual accuracy may be compromised due to its practical nature’, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2012).