Hypertension…
Dr. Gerdi Quist
University College London
11 April 2013
Seçkin Aydin's latest art project, Hypertension, plays with tensions, conflicts and oppositions. In a series of photographs he takes objects associated with fast living, power and status and covers these with carpets. One of these, a speedboat, has an unsettling aesthetic in its own right. Unsettling, because the act of replacing the skin of the object is much more than skin deep. It invites reflection not only on the oppositions which are being presented, but also on the effect of these oppositions.
Replacing the ungiving hard, shiny and smooth metallic surface of the speed boat with the textured softness of carpets juxtaposes on one level connotations of stereotypical male attributes - such as speed, power, and outward riches - with stereotypical female ones, such as softness, comfort and inward dreams. By extension, the male-female opposition is reminiscent of an orientalist perspective; the speed, progress and power associated with the West in such a perspective versus the slow seductive sensuousness of the East.
But if you look longer and let the images work in upon you, they invite further reflection. Not just a juxtaposition of stereotypes of male versus female, west versus east, but a hybridity which does not only change the object itself, but also its functionality. And along with that functionality, there is a transformation of meaning. The speedboat seems to become impotent by its feminisation. The boat is no longer a symbol of fast movement through water, wind in your hair, waves splashing up, but becomes instead a static object. Something to sit upon, to reflect and to dream. Instead of the shiny smooth simplicity of form, the complicated, multi-coloured patterns of texture.
And it is in this invitation to dream and reflect on complex multi-patterned textures that yet another change of functionality of the object takes place. The carpet boat does not remain locked in its failure to speed through water. On the contrary. Instead another kind of movement and mobility occurs. The boat becomes the channel for a mobility of mind, ideas and imagination; a nomadic mobility which transcends any questions of hybridity of identities, whether gendered or cultural. Instead, taking a seat on the carpet boat invites the viewer into a world of 'becoming'. Becoming rich or poor, becoming fast or slow. Becoming male or female or any other gender for that matter. A process of becoming that crosses any borders, a becoming that is inspired by what is at home, and what is far away, and everything in between. A process of becoming that invites us to have a look at others and to imagine ourselves in different roles, places and lives.
The carpet boat changes our perspective; riches are not located in objects of status, but in the flights of fancy of the mind.