The Labyrinth of the World, Paradise of the Heart
In her film, The Labyrinth of the World, Paradise of the Heart (2022), Büyüktasçiyan anchors the underground and the above through the water architecture of Prague, featuring the Bubeneč wastewater treatment plant and the public baths of the city. Within the stop motion sequences, tile-like glass beads meander between the cavities of these aquatic spaces covered with glazed Rako tiles, like vocalised contours, reverberating distilled traces of cultural appropriation throughout a historical continuum. Produced in Rakovník and found across Prague, through surveying fragments of these Orientalist tiles, the artist resurfaces the underlying tensions between body and surface, ornament and power, scale and representation through constructed environments shaped around the notions of purity and cultural contamination, characteristic of Prague’s colonial past and turbulent history as a threshold of multiple temporalities and communal imaginaries.
Hera Büyüktasçiyan (TR)
Hera Büyüktasçiyan (b.1984 Istanbul) unfolds the ways in which memory, space, identity, and knowledge are shaped by deeply ingrained yet constantly evolving waves and ruptures of history. The artist often references nature, archeology, and iconography, as well as architectural structures as the foundation for her works, closely observing their genealogies and the ways in which they shift and evolve over time. Through her site specific interventions, sculptures, drawings and film, Büyüktasçiyan dives into the terrestrial imagination by unearthing patterns of selected narratives and timelines that unfold the material memory of unstable spaces and the hybrid nature of things embedded within. Büyüktasçiyan participated in several local and international exhibitions such as: Taipei Biennale(2025); Bukhara Biennale (2025); Lentos Museum(2024);EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (2023); CIAP Vassiviere(2023); Tate St.Ives(2023) ;14th Gwangju Biennale(2023) ,Tate Modern(2022); British Museum (2021); New Museum Triennale(2021); 3rd and 4th Autostrada Biennale (2021-23); The British Museum(2020), 2nd Lahore Biennale(2020); 1st Inaugural Toronto Biennale(2019); ifa-Galerie Berlin (2019); Dhaka Art Summit, (2018); EVA International Ireland’s Biennale (2016); 14th Istanbul Biennale(2015); 56th Venice Biennale – National Pavilion of Armenia(2015); State of Concept(2015); SALT Beyoğlu(2015);The Jerusalem ShowVII(2014); Galeri Mana (2014); ARTER(2013); PiST///Interdisciplinary Project Space (2013)