The Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, Ireland, is currently presenting the installation Rest (2024) by Turkish artist İz Öztat. Rest has been commissioned as a part of the exhibition Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, which is being shown over three locations at IMMA over a staggered period. Previously at the Garden Galleries and the East Wing at IMMA, the exhibition is now being shown at the Courtyard Galleries until September 9, 2024. Rest emerged out of a research project examining the nation-states that arose in the wake of the First World War, specifically focusing on the role of artists in generating national identity. Rest brings the exhibition's focus to the top-down ideologies that govern nations, as well as how they are resisted. STIR connected with Öztat through Johanne Mullan, Curator, IMMA Collection to discuss the art installation.

Rest takes up two rooms of the Courtyard Galleries and contains several curious objects including a length of fabric hanging from the ceiling, the tops of utensils and a barrel, in room one. Meanwhile, room two shows a film of the installation artist and multiple collaborators interacting with these objects. The title of the installation carries various connotations of the word “rest”, for Öztat and the extended group of performance artists. Per an exhibition note, one implication of the term has to do with marginalised and subaltern peoples whose rights are denied by the leaders of their nations. It can also refer to the burden of overturning state violence that rests on the shoulders of so many people. Inversely, it can serve to express the burden of perpetuating that violence that rests on the shoulders of authoritarian leaders who wish to exert total control over their populations. It can mean the act of laying the dead to rest through collective mourning and a demand for justice and finally, “rest” can signal a form of recovery at the end of a long, bitter struggle for freedom and peace. If we are to add our interpretation of the word, perhaps “rest” can also denote a state of non-violent non-cooperation with the institutions that persecute and subjugate people.

The work is informed by intergenerational experiences of resistance against state violence, oppression and criminalisation of dissent in Turkey. – İz Öztat, Artist, ‘Rest’

Öztat discusses the film in room two, telling STIR, “The film starts with the top-down imposition of arbitrary borders. While some accept and/or enforce these borders and the orders of the authority figure (situated above all others on the aerial silk), some are resisting and organising against them. Eventually, everyone on the ground mobilises around a common demand for justice, forcing the authority figure to come down and they all undo the imposed borders as part of a peace negotiation sequence.” Here, the film shifts from the performance art piece to a scene from a rehearsal where the performing artists voice their disbelief in the success of a peace process.

Öztat purposefully subverted any regional specificity within the mixed media installation, as she wished to create an artwork that is largely open to interpretation. However, this is not to say that the artwork was conceived in a vacuum, as lived experiences have been critical in shaping Rest. Öztat tells STIR, "The work is informed by intergenerational experiences of resistance against state violence, oppression and criminalisation of dissent in Turkey."

Öztat is inspired by the grassroots social movements she has come in contact with and the postcolonial, decolonial, anti-authoritarian and feminist politics they have enshrined. For example, she was commissioned by the 14th Istanbul Biennale (2015) to undertake the research-based installation art piece Who Carries the Water, in collaboration with Fatma Belkıs. The work explored the grassroots struggle of Anatolian villagers to protect the water bodies in their surroundings from government-funded hydroelectric projects, which they then showcased in Istanbul. In her words, "I am aligned with imaginaries that try to set their horizon somewhere other than state-centred narratives, such as experimenting with autonomy and emphasising community participation in local governance." Perhaps Rest will prompt her audiences to think more critically about power structures and non-violent, community-led efforts to subvert them.

'Rest' is on view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin from February 15 - September 9, 2024.