ESKISEHIR.- OMM - Odunpazarı Modern Museum, in Eskişehir, Turkey, launched the group exhibition “Don’t Look Back, Deep is the Past” between December 10, 2021 and May 31, 2022. Spreading across all floors of OMM, the exhibition focuses on the roles and identities assigned to individuals in the context of their relationship with society, habits based on social norms and the ways in which we define the Other.

Running parallel to the exhibition programme, a podcast including the featured artists in the exhibition is available on Spotify and a specially curated selection of films can be viewed for free with the promo code “omm” on MUBI.

“Don’t Look Back, Deep is the Past” brings together the works of 31 artists, exploring the concepts of belonging, adaptation and confrontation that the individual experiences during his or her struggle for survival.

In a time when a polarised understanding of individuality prevails, the exhibition also seeks an answer to the question “What is freedom of expression?” Thus, the artworks find a commonality in the traditional techniques and images they are imbued with.

Providing opportunities to discover new connections between individual and collective while strolling through the depths of time, the selection of works gives viewers new ideas about pre-assigned roles, prescribed constraints and the possibility of alternative lives while also inviting them to reconsider their idiosyncratic placements and positions in a new light.

OMM Exhibitions Director Zeynep Birced expresses her thoughts on the exhibition by saying, “‘Don’t Look Back, Deep is the Past’ focuses on the social, cultural and political changes Turkey went through in the 20th century and their impact on the individual's struggle for existence, as well as the problematic of ‘belonging’ inherent in the aforementioned sociological structure. In retrospect, the exhibition brings together renowned contemporary artists from Turkey with young artists, most of whom began producing in the 2000s and go back to their own roots to explore this particular subject. In this context, the exhibition acts as a canon, allowing us to read the artworks that interconnect to form parts of an entire corpus, through the notion of ‘me and non-me’.” (Image credit: Nilbar Güreş, from the series TrabZONE Overhead, C-print-150x100cm, 2010)

Among the artists who takes part in the exhibition are Ali Elmacı, Antonio Cosentino, Aydan Murtezaoğlu, Bengisu Bayrak, Can İncekara, CANAN, Cansu Yıldıran, Damla Yalçın, Eda Çekil, Fatma Bucak, Gözde İlkin, Halil Altındere, Hasan Özgür Top, İhsan Oturmak, Kezban Arca Batıbeki, Manolya Çelikler, Memed Erdener, Mustafa Boğa, Nancy Atakan, Nilbar Güreş, Nur Koçak, Olgaç Bozalp, Pınar Yolaçan, Ramazan Can, Rehan Miskci, Sinan Tuncay, Şener Özmen, Şükran Moral, Zehra Çobanlı, Zeren Göktan and Zeyno Pekünlü.

The exhibition “Don’t Look Back, Deep is the Past” can be seen at OMM until May 31, 2022.