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Neriman Polat, 6. International İstanbul Biennial Catalogue, 1999

Fulya Erdemci

Having completed her studies in painting, Neriman Polat chooses to use photography and video. In her search for simplicity, clearness, and purity in the formal organization of her works, Neriman Polat facilitates the creation of a non- referential, fictitious milieu and attemps to reveal what is hidden – or better yet, what is possible in the visual format. She renders photography and video pure and simple in order to clear out all kinds textual and amotional connotations so that a type of futuristic "screen-image" appears in a circularity that vacillates between documentary and fiction.

In most of her works, a " science- fictive" vision projects towards the future but in a way that is critical
and pessimitic. A video work from 1997, Out of His Own Reality….is like her photography in that it similarly articulates the question of a "new reality"in a hypothetical world to come. Also like her photographs, Neriman Polat’s video includes one of her pupils from the high school where she teaches painting. Here, a young student is portreyed as if told exactly where to look .He silently and obediently moves his eyes up and down, right and left in a discontinuous, abrupt mimics while a robot- like preciseness, accompanied by a slight touch of anxiety, is fixed on his face. Simultaneously, a voice- over narrates the process involved in formatting the subject to adapt to the "new reality".

Polat’s gloomy reflection on the formation and education of future generation’s is completed in another video work, jellyfish(1998) , in which one sees several jellyfish moving slowly and harmoniosly through deep blue waters, accompanied by a calm voice tinged with a light tone of melancholy.A future, lost exudes from the images and seemingly permeates our skin. Polat’s criticism of a "science-fictional" world subty throws into question society’s acceptance of and indisputable trust in new technologies as remedies for a better future.