LARA ÖGEL

Dates of residency: January till February 2016
Born: 1987
Nationality: Turkish
Lives and works: Istanbul, Turkey
Education: 
2011 Intensive Foundation Program, Slade School of Fine Art
2008 BA Screen Studies/Film at Clark University
Selected Shows:
2019 Public Intimacy, Açıkekran, Istanbul
2018 İmtidad, Galata Greek School Open Library, Istanbul
2017 Driftwood, or how we surfaced through currents, Athens
2016 Come Back! All is Forgiven, Protocinema, Paris

 
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THE ARTIST
Lara Ögel creates site-specific and contextual installations in her artistic practice, working with a variety of mediums from paper-based works to video. Her artistic production employs aggregated personal imagery, objects and sounds in an effort to resample her visual experiences in an intimate exploration of self. The artist received her bachelor’s degree in Film and Communication from Clark University and attended the Intensive Summer Foundation at the London Slade School of Fine Arts. 

THE RESIDENCY
Ögels’s fascination with her temporary new surroundings led her to investigate the origin and use of the apartment curtains seen all over Beirut. A site-specific installation mirrors the outlines the curtains draw in the city through a subtle patterned composition. Their function of creating and structuring private and public space, recalls the artists’ personal experience of encountering tangible, psychological boundaries as she understands Beirut. Curtains become a metaphor for the position of self within society, the city, and in relation to people and contexts. The idea of participation/non-participation becomes a question within the intervention.
A video installation shows a nonchalant testimony of human presence on loop, accompanied by the sounds of the orchestra tuning in before a concert. The feeling of suspense and continuity challenges our expectation for narration. Through this motion of ever repeating, the aspect of time passing and time recording is lifted. The experience becomes a transparent meditation, blending notions of time, place and memory.