Zilberman Selected is pleased to present the exhibition Vision, Mission Values, curated by T. Melis Golar, at Piyalepaşa from March 15 to May 13, 2023. Bringing together works by Sena Başöz, Guy Ben-Ner, Burak Delier, Memed Erdener, Neriman Polat, and Pilvi Takala, the exhibition examines the effects of economic crises on corporate life, consumption habits, domestic economy, and stress management.  

The notions of vision, mission, and value statement through which establishments declare their goals, purpose, ethical approach, short and long-term strategies on the way of institutionalization and the individuals who are having difficulties fulfilling their aims in the midst of any economic fall find an ironic common ground through this exhibition. These recent developments led employees, whether from the service or the manufacturing sectors that produce immense economic value, to question their working conditions and thus their private lives that were inevitably affected. In relation to the economic crisis and subsequent changes over time, corporate firms back down from their declared mission, vision, and values along with their financial plans, and likewise, the people who feel far from realizing themselves and thus begin to go through an existential crisis when considered on an individual level. Along with the desperation felt personally following economical struggles, problems such as unequal conditions, intense stress levels, and mobbing have become more apparent under these circumstances. Vision, Mission, Values narrates this system’s actors’ twisted understanding of values and perceptions over their consumption habits, work ethics, domestic economy, and stress management.  

In A Fall of the Net Bag and Two Handkerchiefs, Neriman Polat uses objects that have close relations to the economy and leaves their marks on a surface where the object itself is absent but its absence apparent, thus enabling the visitor to think over its emptiness and assessing the situation through the work. Memed Erdener participates with works that vary in medium. Through A Soundless Sentence, he attempts to make a linguistic experimentation that belongs not to culture but to nature, expressing his criticism of the current situation through this sentence. The sculptures titled What Matters Is To Eat, When You’re Full and Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimetres Inside Your Skull criticize unequal income distribution, the futility of the idea of property, and loss of money as it changes hands. In Thief Letters, each letter gives over a part from the previous, thereby allowing the visitor to question these words’ meaning both on material and immaterial scales such as the state, the institution, and the individual. Sena Başöz deals with the doctrines which satisfy the desires estranged by the continuous hunger for consumption and poor living conditions with the pledge of heaven's meta-abundance after death through the piece titled Heaven on Earth. On the other hand, Feet reminds the viewer of the surreal survival mode of human beings and its resilient act of reducing one’s own being to a lightness that floats on water in order to keep up with the hardship of life.  

In The Stroker video, in an attempt to heal emotionally, improve communication, and increase productivity in the workplace, Pilvi Takala disguises herself as a worker offering touch service, laying bare the sociological and psychological sphere between people sharing a co-working space. In his series of posters WORK, LAW, YOU, ME: Two Short Routines on Work, Law and Self, Burak Delier uses sports metaphors, which are widely used in the representation of business life, as his starting point. Within the order in which work and self- discipline are imposed as the basis of success and morality, he does some indoctrination exercises in order to keep the motivation and psychology of individuals at standard level. The work points out the inadequacy of our way of facilitating work under the conditions imposed by capitalism in which our career plans, work life, and escape plans are affected. Finally, Guy Ben-Ner proves the capacity of humans to convert economic constraints into creative advantages with his video Drop the Monkey in which he intertwines his art and his life.  

On one hand, the exhibition Vision, Mission, Values focuses on the individual who questions the ways of living and producing under the current economical and psychological conditions while on a larger scale, it highlights the society which tries to adapt to new conditions and derives new forms of motivations, searches for creative solutions and invents new exit ways. The works in the exhibition will identify contemporary circumstances and examine methods of escape and coping from within.    

 *Lafargue, P. (2020). The right to be lazy. BoD–Books on Demand.  

Curator: T. Melis Golar

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