Tidal Waves
Leyla Emadi
16.02 - 03.04.2021
Mixer is pleased to present Leyla Emadi’s solo exhibition, Tidal Waves. Emadi’s first solo exhibition at Mixer and can be viewed at Mixer’s project room during February 16 - April 3, 2021.
Tidal Waves allows us to view how Leyla Emadi’s work has evolved through the necessary changes and societal problems she experienced over the past year. The exhibition challenges our comfort zones and the contrasting state of the unknown and the uncertain. The artist focuses on the emotional ups and downs caused by sudden, uncontrollable changes in our daily lives, and the state of uncertainty created by these tidal waves that leads to a “destruction” within the “soul.” Leyla Emadi explains the eponymous tidal waves in her own words:
As we continue to live in these uncertainties, some mornings we wake up feeling very strong, as if we are capable of overcoming all obstacles, while other mornings we feel very heavy, as if we are seven floors below the ground. Although these tidal waves seem troubling in the moment, any venture out of our comfort zone is actually a venture into our essential selves. As Zygmunt Bauman said, uncertainty is the natural habitat of human life; the hope of avoiding uncertainty is the engine of the human quest.
The exhibition brings together installations that are composed of phrases that spill first onto paper, and then into the exhibition space from the mind of the individual experiencing the tidal waves. The exhibition presents forms that are for the most part transformed into words and sentences with concrete letters, reflecting the artist’s torn position between their individual comfort zone and a state of uncertainty.
Tidal can be viewed in Mixer’s project room between February 16 - April 3, 2021.
Leyla Emadi
Leyla Emadi, born in Ankara in 1977, began her art education at Los Angeles Pierce College in Three Dimensional Art. She completed her undergraduate and master’s degree at the Painting department of Yeditepe University Faculty of Fine Arts. She has been pursuing her doctoral education at the same institution and department since 2015. She also continues to produce work from her studio in Istanbul and take part in exhibitions.
In her work, Emadi examines the gender, religion, politics, ideology, and rigid opinions that the individual is bound to. She uses materials based on the concept she works on, resulting in a wide range of production. Alongside canvases, her works include paper creations, installations, and, increasingly over recent years, concrete sentences. She continues to take part in numerous exhibitions in Turkey and abroad.
