Melike Kara: Emine’s Garden

Melike Kara (b. 1985, lives and works in Cologne) develops her painterly work alongside the writing of poetry and the production of sculptures, videos and other media. The experimental use of surfaces is a characteristic of her paintings, which are treated with thick oil pastels, for example, or the use of foreign materials such as textiles.

In her first institutional solo exhibition in Switzerland, Kara continues her exploration of Kurdish traditions and questions of historicisation, tradition and community. She realised site-specific works in a large-scale installation that transform the spaces of the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen into her own visual archive.

The photographs stem from family members and Kara’s extended network of relationships, an archive that the artist is continuously compiling. Like a carpet, the photographs cover the floor of the Kunst Halle. Together with the paintings, in which Kara articulates her very own visual language, the installation reveals itself as a series of meditations on collective images. 

Through the collection and rearrangement of the material heritage, as well as the combination with gestural-abstract compositions, Kara’s personal gaze unfolds as an intimate narrative of her own family history and the visual culture of the Kurdish diaspora. The large-scale occupation of the space takes place as an intimate and at the same time political gesture. Thus giving visibility to the disappearing population, whose culture is only maintained through informal channels and oral traditions, and to their history.

Drawing on various weaving techniques and customs, Kara abstracts, layers, and interweaves her family history with Kurdish tapestry motifs from different regions and tribes in the exhibition. The ambiguity between abstraction and figuration, individual and collectivity, which is inherent in these tapestries, is constituted in the spatial arrangement but also as a particularity of her paintings into a visual testimony of a collective visual language and at the same time the artist’s very own.

Melike Kara (b. 1985 in Bensberg, Germany) lives and works in Cologne. Solo exhibitions (selection): as above so below, Arcadia Missa, London (2022); How she shapes us, LC Queisser, Tbilisi, Georgia, (2021); Nothing Is Yours, Everything Is You, Cologne Art Association, Cologne (2021); Gowend Garden, Salon 94, New York (2019); new work, Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2019); A Taste of Parsley, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2018); Köpek, Peres Projects, Berlin (2017); Honey: Bread & Butter (with Jessica Gispert), Komplot, Brussels (2016); Lunch, Salon Kennedy, Frankfurt (2015); Real Sorbet, Ortlo, Leipzig (2014). Group exhibition (selection): I’ve only got eyes for you, Philara Foundation, Dusseldorf (2023); Is it morning for you yet?, 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); Traverser les silences, Editions Dilecta, Paris (2022); The Dreamers, 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale, Belgrade (2021); love your symptom, but not too much, blank projects, Cape Town (2020); BAMBOO BAR, AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE, Dortmund Art Association, Dortmund, Germany (2018); White Columns Benefit Exhibition and Auction, White Columns, New York (2017); In Wonderland, Salon Dahlmann, Berlin (2016); Shortcuts, Hallmackenreuther, Cologne (2014); Dark(traces), Hamburg Film Festival, Hamburg (2013).

For further questions please contact Giovanni Carmine (carmine@k9000.ch) or Céline Matter (matter@k9000.ch).

The Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen is supported by: Stadt St.Gallen, Kulturförderung Kanton St.Gallen, Swisslos, Susanne und Martin Knechtli-Kradolfer-Stiftung, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, Martel AG, Kulturförderung Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Raiffeisen.

Special thanks to Grafitec AG and Royal Talens Schweiz.