And the Iron Curtain Fell on His Library

Description: And the Iron Curtain Fell on His Library is a sound installation that reflects on censorship and repression during Turkey’s 1980 military coup through the artist’s father’s personal library. On the night of the coup, his collection of banned books was hastily buried in secret. In this work, the artist and her father revisit that act of burial by reading excerpts from the banned books together. Their recorded voices are then buried beneath a bed of soil within the gallery, inviting audiences to lie down and listen—pressing their ears to the earth to hear what the military regime once sought to silence. The installation is activated through an endurance performance titled If You Listen, I’ll Remember, transforming an act of concealment into one of intergenerational remembrance and resistance.

Materials: Cedar Wood, 2 x 8inch woofers, 10 meters speaker wire, Sony STR-DN850 receiver, media player, soil. Sound: readings of selected text.

Image Description: Sound installation views, ‘Hande Sever: And the Iron Curtain Fell on His Library’, New Wight Gallery, 2017. Photo: Aleksey Kondratyev