Sinejan Kılıç Buchina
From Place to Non-Place
Opening : July 25 th 5pm
For the inaugural opening of our new space, Synesthesia is proud to present Sinejan Kılıç Buchina’s solo show, From Place to Non-Place.
Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is an artist who uses topographic and political mapping to investigate issues of borders and displacement. Her pieces are layered and kinetic--composed of both organic and synthetic materials such as horse hair, flowers, plants, spices, dust, metal, concrete bonding agent, and black tea. Oxidation and disintegration of these elements on the canvas surface have the effect of a ceaseless shifting, merging, forming, and erasing, much like nations over time.
Buchina questions the geography and existence of disappearing nations such as Abkhazia, by evoking the theory of “non-place.” This term, coined by the French Anthropologist Marc Augé, refers to anthropological spaces of transience. In “non-places”, human beings are considered to be anonymous; as the site of their existence does not hold enough significance to be regarded as "a place", which we tend to think of as being relational, historical, and identifiable. “Non-places” can not integrate within the earlier “place”, as an event has occurred rendering it now a “place of memory”.Presently, Buchina has started a new series, debuting here at Synesthesia. Since the onset of the current pandemic, she has begun assembling miniature structures using fragments of earlier works. Meticulously pulling apart her previous pieces, Buchina reforms them. It is a sensual exercise mobilizing these elements of identity by igniting smell, taste, and touch to sift through memories attached to certain places and times of a near and distant past.
Describing her works as organisms, Buchina enlivens them as being full of “languages vanishing from the earth as lakes dry out” or a body “losing limbs and organs, in the way countries are divided and claimed after a conflict.”
BIO:
Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is an artist and arts educator, working in both New York and Istanbul. She holds an MA from City University in New York (2019), a BFA from Marmara University in Turkey (2007). Buchina has exhibited work internationally in: Walter Meade Gallery, NY (2020), Küf solo show at Amos Eno Gallery, NY (2019), The Every Women Biennial, NY (2017), When Black Swallows Red at the La Mama La Galleria, NY (2018), Arts Depot, London, United Kingdom (2019), Brighthill New York, NY (2017), Tattoo Circus, London, United Kingdom (2019).
She is a recipient of several awards, including the Connor Travel Fellowship, granted to present her academic paper in International Conference at the Madrid Carlos iii University; the Light Space & Time Award for excellence in painting; a P.E.O Education Grant; as well as President's Fund for Excellence scholarship. She has also participated in the following residencies: Critical Feedback Program Trestle Art Space, Brooklyn, New York (2019), Twin Oaks Residency, Treadwell, New York (2018), Node Center for Curatorial Studies, Berlin, Germany (2012).