all familiar, all foreign

Curated by Ulya Soley, the exhibition brings together works produced by the artist using different media such as photography, video, sculpture and text. Conceived as a speculative archaeological site, the exhibition proposes new ways of constructing the world and offers alternative tools for thinking about the future.

The installation in the main exhibition space, which focuses on the memory of digital footprints, is a glitch in everyday life, a rupture that alters the perception of reality. The objects placed on a background that resembles a digital topography, make visible the journey of each new page clicked, photo shared or e-mail sent. The poems that appear in different media evoke a fictional future in the post-human era, where emotions that we think are unique to humans are attributed to machines. This fictional world is enriched by divinities and nonscientific rituals reflected in the images derived by the algorithms. The multilayered video, which brings together the artist’s videos focusing on the change and transformation of the urban image, is exhibited in the form of an installation. Through the works that problematize the relationship between technology and power structures, the exhibition becomes a space where everything feels simultaneously familiar and foreign.

all familiar, all foreign will travel to TOP e.V in Berlin where it will open in November.

“all familiar, all foreign: You are in an infinite background, a place with no date. Your phone is unable to pick up the satellite signals; it has already lost its function. None of the imagery that represents the earth looks realistic. Your location cannot be found on maps. All familiar objects are now in your memory. You find yourself becoming emotional about digital tools. This is an archeological site of the future. Here, you are constructing the future.”

About Yelta Köm
Yelta Köm (b.1986, Istanbul) is an artist who brings together architectural, artistic, and spatial practices to discuss social and political issues. Environmental perception, urban imagery, neoliberal transformations, tensions between nature and technology, and collective movements often inspire his work. Collaboration is a crucialpart of Köm's practice, which involves various methodologies and materials. His work is centered aroundlandforms, technology, critical approaches to environment and communities, urban surveillance methodologies,data mapping systems, architectural technologies, oral and cinematographic storytelling, and the questioning of representation techniques.

Köm received his undergraduate degree from the Department of Architecture at Yıldız Technical University and completed his master's degree at the Städelschule Academy of Fine Arts. He is a co-founder of Herkes İçin Mimarlık (Architecture for All), a non-profit organization devoted to offering approaches to social problems in Turkey from an architectural perspective. He participated in Micro Residency (Athens) in 2018 and in SAHA Studio (as part of the Silent University Orientation Program) in 2022. Köm's personal and collective works have been exhibited in several biennials, museums, galleries and art institutions such as Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul Design Biennial, Venice Architecture Biennale, MAXXI Museum (Rome), Goethe-Institut (Athens, Ankara), SALT (Istanbul), V&A Museum (London), nGbK (Berlin), The Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery UM (Prague), transmediale vorspiel Silent Green (Berlin), Chicago Architecture Biennial, TOP e.V (Berlin), and Versus Art Project (Istanbul).

Yelta Köm is currently working as a researcher on the Topological Atlas project hosted by TU Delft and is teaching at the Practices and Politics of Representation chair of Bauhaus Universität Weimar Faculty of Architecture. He is based in Berlin.

About Ulya Soley
Ulya Soley works at Pera Museum. She completed her MA in Culture, Criticism and Curation at Central Saint Martins and her undergraduate studies in Art History and Psychology at McGill University. Her recent curatorial projects include Hosting Bodies at Sanatorium, A Question of Taste at Pera Museum and How shall we dress for the occasion? at 601 Artspace, New York. She’s mainly interested in exploring cyberculture through a queer feminist lens using speculative thinking as a methodology. She’s done editorial work for various artist books and magazines and her writing appeared in publications such as Art agenda, Sanat Dünyamız, Argonotlar, Art unlimited, Manifold, callingmag, The Believer Logger, K24 and borderless.