Speaking of the deep-rooted feeling of uncertainty which existing in the contemporary world produces, sociologist Nikos Papastergiadis does not look at the phenomena of 'migration' and 'exile' only through a perspective of 'the trauma of leaving, imbalances of social injustice, misunderstandings between different languages, dreams of freedom, and nostalgia', hot considers them within their wider associations, as a metaphor of the 'modern condition'.* Speaking of Modernism's passion for journey, Papastergiadis rightfully asks: In modern times, who is 'native' and where is home?

Those who live outside their countries for any reason display that heing in exile, its metaphoric associations aside, transforms, in all its reality, into a form of existence for the individual. Many authors and philosophers think that this kind of an experience stimulates creativity. In fact, 'experience' primarily has something to say at the points of questioning national and cultural identities, investigating what is named to be an 'international' position, and the shaping through interaction of different cultures.

Borusan Culture and Art Center, with this second exhibition realized with the participation of Şükran Aziz, Osman Dinç, Azade Köker, and Ahmet Oran, in the project entitled Istanbul Roundtrip presents the reflections of this area of experience itself. Each of the artists who are significant for their different approaches, live somewhere in-between 'coming to' and the 'going from'; they are 'guests' in their 'homes', carriers of identities which 'multiply' and 'stratify' through the dual characteristics of two separate cultures. They belong neither here nor to the place they go to: they are individuals in-between, they are 'natives' of an abstract area, which, although cannot be easily named, introduce significant unfoldings to the questioning and structuring of the phenomenon of identity. Perhaps there are many things we can learn from the experiences of these artists who speak in the 'language' of the different dimension which emerges from standing at two different points at once.

It is possible to see all reflections of this 'state of exile' in Şükran Aziz's work. It is possible to speak of a basic stimulus which is sensed strongly in her interactive exhibitions since the early 1990s, where she uses different tools of expression as text, sound, and electronic images: a search. Among the voices and images of hundreds of individuals from different cultures Şükran Aziz seeks what 'identity' is. From "Migration, Time, Identity," to "I, You, They / Yesterday and Today," from "Vibrations" to "Recollections," her exhibitions I have seen in Istanbul, can be seen as a step in her investigations which she pursues since the very beginning by, examining the phenomena of especially language and memory. Every person's language and memory is important: when investigating the 'construct' of individual identities, the formation process of social identity comes into question. Explaining that her art, in the recent years, has developed in the direction of "capturing and recreating the lost memories of individuals, thus establishing a human experiences archive for the future," Şükran Aziz shares with us a segment of this archive in her project entitled "Memory Drops." Having recorded the memories and dreams of hundreds of individuals for her work entitled "Memory as a Metaphor," she presents these voices to the viewers in "Memory Drops." The presentation of the project is quite different than the forms Şükran Aziz uses in her other works: here she constructs an illusionary atmosphere and introduces elements of space and color. In each of the drops there are the memories and dreams of many people from different cultures; if we listen they whisper us their secrets.

We can place Osman Dinç's 'significant' sculptures in our visual memories as objects which express themselves in absolute form, hut this approach would hinder us from seeing the meanings the medium, which he uses carries. By using the natural associations of materials like glass, iron, stone, wood, lead, and by using these materials 'to accompany these associations' without disengaging their own meanings, the artist gives the viewer hints only. The durability-vulnerability,, heaviness-lightness, permanence-temporality, naturality-industriality of the material he uses are elements of attention. The Artist uses these facts in his attempt to 'construct meaning' through his sculptures. He investigates the unexplored secrets of earth, water, fire, and air through the media he uses. For Osman Dinç, the story of the Earth is an interesting one. He attempts to present this both in aesthetic and conceptual terms. In fact, on the one hand he is like a nomad who carries with him in his sack the things he cannot abandon: his art is like a treasury of memories which reflect the essence of his own identity. The artist likes to use expressionistic titles as "Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat," "The Poor Feed on Hupe," "Earth is Iron Sky is Copper" and continuously makes references to his past and roots through his sculpture and displays the sensitivity of a person who experienced closeness to nature. And perhaps this is the reason for the poetry in his sculptures?

Substantially using local associations as a significant element of his work, could that what makes Osman Dinç's sculptures interesting be their ability to extend from the local to the universal and from the universal to the local? A top can remind us of the Artist's childhood, of Anatolia, though it also is associated with the notion of time. The wheel, with all its associations, travels from the past into the future; intuits time, connotes space. Perhaps the most important aspect of Osman Dinç's sculptures which he places in the space is, further to rendering time and space-the two fundamental aspects of his art-visual, recreating them. Isn't this the major task of a nomad, an exile?

Azade Köker's sculptures since 1980s, which she makes by using earth and materials like glass, metal, stone to which she attributes various meanings, constituted the beginning of her period in art, where she emphasizes the issue of 'women'. As Köker presents her female sculptures which she furnishes with contemporary symbols in an expressionistic formalism that resemble the ancient, in this way, she reveals women's struggle for existence in history. And especially for her recent works, it can be said that she uses medium as a means of expression but the psychological aspect of her approach to the issue has increased. In her recent sculpture which she makes by using paper, it is possible to read her attitude which ever more questions not only the issue of women but also the struggle for survival and existence, the struggle with nature and culture. In her recent work, presenting conflicts such as the internal-external, presence-absence, temporality-permanence by emptying the inside of objects and bodies, and by weaving paper covers around them, Köker plays with the sense of reality of the viewer, creates an impression of psychological spacelessness and timlessness.

It is interesting to compare Azade Köker's earlier female sculptures and her recent paper clothes. In her earlier works Köker showed the body; now she does not show but only intuits it. She reflects with a silent anger which is sensed but is not visible, the presentation of the body as an object of passion, the tendency of our time to standardize-like everything else-the body, the 'puppetization' of the female body by the Media.

Perhaps there is another small point we need to underline here: in her sculpture until the late 1980s, Köker had an approach which revealed to a greater extent the traces of her own past and roots. But her recent works associate with the nomad's state of belonging neither here nor there: emptied bodies whose inside is visible simultaneously remind us of forgetting and recollection, and seem to tell us that we carry our roots not in our bodies but in our memories to the extent it can resist time.

Can we speak of the painting being in exile in its 'home land'? Abstract painting, among the figurative or abstracted paintings that connect to the external world is, even today, in a state of being 'foreign'. The eye seeks what it knows, what it is familiar with.

Ahmet Oran's paintings are visual objects which present the viewer the depth of meditation, and exist only in their 'own being'. It is an art which conducts its relation with the external world on an abstract basis and thus insists in its own being: neither a story nor a thought, it is painting. The 'seeking eye' may not succeed in finding 'something' in these paintings, but the individual who rejects the usual ways of thinking which occur between the perception process and the eye, may feel that the doors of their internal world start to open. Painting may, at times, give the individual the transcendental feeling which emerges as a consequence of natural emotions or which one feels only in nature. Ahmet Oran's paintings, in this sense, remind us of Rothko or Newman who divide the painting with vertical lines in order to display the abstract (and sacred) light behind the canvas.

In his paintings which address the viewer's existence, which present the distance between the space it is viewed and its own space, Ahmet Oran constructs his 'language' with colors. Rather than with associations, the canvas transforms into a deep surface with the texture of the layers of painting which overlap and thus hide one another. The Artist seems to be in an effort to create a depth of fire and water; the result is like a trans-temporal, trans-conscious 'deep dive' effect-like sleep.

Ahmet Oran's paintings, which construct a metaphysical reality, remind us of Cezanne's words: "Color is where our brain meets with the universe." Does this leave us anything more to say?

Ahu Antmen