From an Exhibition 1989

Editor: Here we have Füsun Onur’s "From an Exhibition," created in 1989 using mixed-media and collage. It feels incomplete, almost like a discarded fragment. What draws your eye to this particular assemblage? Curator: What intrigues me is Onur’s deliberate engagement with the *process* of display itself. Consider the exposed materials – the seemingly distressed frame, the collage elements that appear almost like remnants. It begs the question: what commentary is she making on the conventions and often, the *labor* involved in staging and presenting art? Editor: I see what you mean! It is not so much about what is within the frame, but the frame itself becoming the art, and speaking of its own making. The threads hanging down almost seem like failed attempts at…something. Curator: Precisely! It's less about the *prestige* of the final “artwork” and more about the raw, unedited elements that comprise it. How do these "failures," as you call them, relate to societal perceptions of value and perfection, even worth, in the art world? And do these choices push against traditional hierarchies of “high art” versus “craft”? Editor: So, she is challenging the very act of art-making and display… I'm starting to see this piece in a whole new light, as less of a fragment and more of a deliberate deconstruction. It’s making me reconsider the value we place on polished presentation in art. Curator: Indeed. Perhaps Onur invites us to appreciate the unrefined and to reconsider what truly constitutes art in a consumer-driven society, and question its means of production. Editor: I never considered that art materials could express something larger about production and display!