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part of
double bill #24
10th of November | 09:05
Every year on the 10th of November, at 09:05 in the morning, individuals across Turkey cease all activities. Cars pull over, and pedestrians stop and stand still, in remembrance of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey), who died on this day and time in 1938. This reverence for Atatürk, the charismatic leader who modernised and secularised Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, is an astonishing national phenomenon that reveals much about the ideological constructions that bind—some would say too tightly—the country together.
Like much of her previous work, Els Opsomer’s film is informed by her experiences in the places she visits. It begins with photographic slides taken on site and added to her ongoing ‘Urban Archive’. Concerned with how we manoeuvre through what she considers an increasingly aggressive world, she often trains her gaze on urban phenomena that reveal the ways that we engage with our surroundings.
Bio Els Opsomer
Els Opsomer lives and works in Brussels, Belgium, and Rufisque, Senegal. Her artwork stems from a constantly expanding archive of urban images [archive building] and is a reinterpretation of our globalised reality, exposing and challenging the notion of personal integrity within it. She participated in multiple international biennial exhibitions, was a resident at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam (1996-1998), and has received the awards Courtisane (2007) and the Jeune Peinture Belge (1997). Opsomer is now the head of the master’s in Photography at the LUCA School of Arts, Brussels.