The mind moves forward in an endless progression. It remembers, forgets, reshapes. Time continues to carry within us everything we thought we had left behind. Sometimes we heal by forgetting, sometimes we exist by remembering.
All of this is a manifestation of the chaos hidden under the guise of "civilization" within the order we live in. Fractures, incomplete narratives, suppressed anger and mourning find only a blurry place in one’s memory. As Assmann¹ states, not every memory is recalled in the functioning of individual or collective memory. Some memories quietly withdraw, while others are consciously suppressed, kept out of sight.
Forgetting is often defined as a lack of remembering; this approach sanctifies the act of remembrance while relegating forgetting to a passive, defective state. However, forgetting should be examined not only by what the individual or society remembers, but by what they choose not to remember. Forgetting can be a defense mechanism, whereas remembering—and making others remember—is a form of resistance.
As Far As I Remember is shaped around visual narrative, archival absences, reconstructed fragments, and deliberate voids. Amidst social turmoil, as the individual strives to construct a coherent identity, memory splits: between what is retained, what is pushed away, and what is intentionally erased. This hazy state of recollection is clearly reflected in the spatial layout of the exhibition. The artist’s self-portrait is placed among expressions and chants of the collective language produced by society, opening up a space of inquiry that is both active and passive.
In Ecemnaz Dalmaz’s practice, consciousness is not only a temporal distance but a spatial, linguistic, and emotional field of intervention. Deliberate voids, what is excluded from the archive, non-repetitive movements or unfinished narratives form the main components of the exhibition’s visual structure.
In the exhibition layout, one room corresponds to the surface of consciousness, while another relates to the layered terrain of the unconscious. At the center of the exhibition stands a wooden piece featuring the frequently recurring image in the artist’s work—a bird evolved from a dinosaur. The curator interprets the space housing this piece as the archive of consciousness, an archaeology. Yet, the objects on display are not historical; they belong to what has been buried deep in the mind.
Each layer, each surface, every interwoven thread… As the viewer explores this room, they do not merely examine an archive; they confront the accumulated, sometimes repressed, sometimes transformed remnants of consciousness. Rather than a temporal arrangement, the room evokes a feeling of timeless entanglement.
The room covered with the tufting technique represents a memory suddenly surfacing from the darkest corner of a dream—suspended between the depths of the subconscious and the surface of consciousness. While its soft texture promises a sense of comfort, it simultaneously brings harsh and burning realities to the surface. Dalmaz’s images transform into the most fragile form of remembrance—memories that appear in the depths of sleep but can never be fully grasped.
As Far As I Remember confronts the viewer with what is missing; through suppressed memories, silences, and recurring images, it traces not remembrance, but forgetting.
"Because a person believes the missing part is everything — and sometimes, forgetting is only possible by scratching the same spot over and over."
Finally, the artist wakes from a nightmare, opens her eyes, the blurry sky begins to clear, and she thinks to herself:In the morning, everything I write the moment I open my eyes is true.
¹ Aleida Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 55.
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