The colour Red is the medium and the subject of Turkish conceptual artist Asli Cavusoglu’s multi-layered exploration in the latest exhibition that’s set to hit Qatar.
Opening Sunday and on until September 11, Cavusoglu’s exhibition will unveil her installation Red/Red at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art Project Space. Comprising 17 pieces, including handmade notebooks of drawings and paintings made with red pigments from Armenia and Turkey, the installation explores “the physicality of a colour to tell a story of coexistence and communality”.
Interestingly, this is the first presentation at Mathaf of Red/Red, following its production for the 14th Istanbul Biennial, SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, (2015), with support from Qatar Museums – an installation that met with high praise in the media. Mathaf, in a note on the exhibition, says, “Delicate drawings are made on worn papers and handmade notebooks in two red inks: Armenian red, extracted from the endangered Armenian cochineal insect, and Turkish red, now used in the national flag. As the patterns modernise from floral to geometric shapes, the resilience of each pigment as it transforms over time is also reflected. In the work, the Turkish red holds its colour while the Armenian fades, narrating the changing physical and allegorical links to national culture, identity, and memory.”
Cavusoglu will also deliver a related public talk on Sunday, during which she will discuss the disappearance of Armenian red as a material, and also “how she views her work as a proposal for a model of co-existence for the inhabitants of the region to protect and develop the natural ecosystem that produces the pigment,” the QM shares.
The story behind the red used in the project is fascinating. A specific pigment traditionally made from an insect known as Ararat or Armenian Cochineal, indigenous to the Ararat Plain, the red used in Red/Red proposes a model of co-existence for inhabitants of this contested geographic region through an ecosystem that fosters the production of this special colour.
Having studied Armenian cochineal, from its earliest extraction in the 7th century BC to its use in manuscripts, or “miniature paintings”, to document Armenian culture and life, Cavusoglu makes fantastic use of the pigment that comes from a carminic acid found in the Ararat or Armenian cochineal insect living in the roots of the Aeluropus littoralis plant.
“This plant is indigenous to the Aras (Araks) River valley, which forms the natural border between Turkey and Armenia. On the Turkish side of the river, knowledge of how to produce Armenian cochineal red has been lost since 1915, while on the Armenian side the plant and insect are threatened by extinction due to 20th century industrialisation,” says Mathaf.
Loaded with tremendous insights and rich sub-text, the artist’s work explores this pigment’s disappearance, speaking to the political and ecological histories of this region. “Red/Red advocates for the protection of the delicate social and organic systems of the Aras valley — human, plant, and animal life — to support a communally protected ecosystem and shared knowledge of production that will preserve the recording of its collective past, present and future existence,” Mathaf points out.
In fact, Armen Sahakyan, PhD, a phytotherapist and senior researcher at the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan, is probably the only person who can still extract this red, based on the recipes from the 14th century Armenian manuscripts. Cavusoglu’s drawings have been created with the 12 grains (1 grain equals 64.798 milligrams) of Armenian cochineal ink that Sahakyan gave her.
Born in Istanbul in 1982, Cavusoglu’s research-based practice explores the production and interpretation of cultural and ecological archaeologies and social histories. Working in video, drawing, and installation, Cavusoglu explores the conditions and histories of artistic and cultural production, and traditions of display.
In her work, Cavusoglu, whose installations have been exhibited in Paris, Sao Paulo, Istanbul, London, Vienna, and New York City, among other cities, turns to various media to investigate silenced histories. These investigations revisit key moments “in an effort to locate the relationship between rupture and continuity as consciousness and how related identities are constructed, and reconstructed”.
In The Stones Talk (2013), for instance, she delves into history to grant archaeological finds unearthed in excavations throughout Turkey a new voice; applying various forms of enhancement to remnants deemed too small or insignificant for museum display in order to lend them a new, decidedly more significant identity.