Leyla Yenirce: SPLITTER

Leyla Yenirce’s SPLITTER (2023) transforms the historic architecture of the Magdeburg monastery church, part of a Romanesque monastery complex that today houses the Museum of Contemporary Art, into a space of tension between visibility and concealment, image and sound. Through a large-scale video and immersive soundscape, Yenirce stages a portrait that challenges conventional representation. A young woman is shown, holding a reflective object. By moving it, she controls her own visibility—alternately shielding herself from the gaze of the viewer and becoming enveloped by a blinding golden light.

While SPLITTER ostensibly offers a portrait, it radically subverts the genre. The subject is not passive but actively determines her relationship to the camera, negotiating between exposure and protection. Yenirce’s approach emphasises autonomy, granting the protagonist agency over her own visibility. The work becomes a site of power dynamics, where the boundaries between revelation and concealment, presence and disappearance are constantly in motion.

This interplay resonates deeply with Leyla Yenirce’s exploration of Kurdish identity, informed by her personal history and the ongoing conflict in Kurdistan. Born in Kurdistan and raised in Germany, Yenirce’s work often addresses themes of survival, resistance, and the politics of visibility. SPLITTER reflects on the legacy of female Kurdish fighters, whose battles for freedom and existence continue against the backdrop of technological warfare. Drones and surveillance technologies have transformed the terrain of resistance, making once protective mountains visible and vulnerable. Yet Yenirce’s work also gestures towards new forms of defiance: the blinding light that shields the woman from view becomes a metaphor for the ongoing struggle for autonomy in the face of asymmetrical power.

By situating SPLITTER within the former monastery church, Yenirce invites viewers to contemplate the architectural echoes of hierarchy and exclusion. Once a place of spiritual authority, the church’s space is now reoriented to emphasize the real world and the marginalized. Yenirce displaces the spiritual order embodied by the building’s architecture, turning instead towards the lived experiences of those fighting for recognition and survival.

Curator: Benedikt Johannes Seerieder