LOOKING AT KHOSRO VAHABI’S ARTISTIC JOURNEY “FROM WITHIN”
İpek Yeğinsü
Our paths with Khosro Vahabi crossed for the first time in 2018 in Istanbul. During and after the pandemic, the human-nature relationship and the poetry found in their delicate balance became one of the most popular topics in the global art scene, which had already formed the departure point of Vahabi’s art well before the pandemic. As I accompanied him in his artistic journey as a writer, curator and friend until 2022, I became a first-hand witness of his reaction against Istanbul’s ecological destruction. His belief that the latter can only be overcome by reestablishing the Istanbulites’ relationship with nature on a spiritual or even a poetic level, led him to create the project I’m a Work of Art (Image 1), which he planned to carry out at the Belgrade Forest. Here, Vahabi wanted the viewers to walk through the forest and discover the remnants of ten different tree roots, with their coordinates marked on Google Maps. As he regarded them as individuals with their own life stories, he would have treated them as if they were masterpieces displayed in a museum by enclosing them with gold-coated rope pillars. He would also have exhibited their photographs on a website accessible through QR codes, while he would have carried beyond the exhibition space the information on their species using a brochure, again accessible through a QR code. Unfortunately, the project initially planned to be inaugurated on the World Forest Day of 2020 had to be postponed due to the pandemic, and it has never been implemented once the artist moved to England. Yet, it currently deserves to be remembered once again as one of the most accurate reflections of his artistic approach.
Although his repertoire contains various instruments such as video, sound and performance, Vahabi’s “mother tounge” is certainly black-and-white photography. Drawing its strength from the light-shadow dialectic, The Fight (2018) series featured in his exhibition “My Forest” that took place in Istanbul in 2024, are an ideal example for the latter (Image 2). Here, Vahabi continues his tendency to personify trees, and transforms the visual tension based on contrast into a metaphor for humanity's never-ending state of war. A similar approach is also evident in his Dancing Needles (2018) series where he personifies pine needles (Image 3). This attitude is essential in helping the viewers empathize with the elements of nature they encounter in everyday life and enhancing their aesthetic sensitivities towards them. In fact, Unveiled (2020) directly addresses this state of neglect (Image 4), where Vahabi shifts his focus to the tree roots he had unnoticingly passed by countless times, engaging in a sort of self-criticism. For the CARVED series of the same year, he uses a new material to draw attention to the overlooked poetic details; by transferring onto fabrics the graffitis and drawings carved into tree trunks, he records the crossing histories of nature and humanity (Image 5). The Reunion (2018-19) series constitute another example of the alternative material experiments in the exhibition, produced in collaboration with his spouse Vajihe Sadeghi (Image 6). In this body of work combining illumination and photography, the East and the West, the traditional and the modern, the natural and the human-made come together in astonishing harmony, pointing at the unity of existence.
Attempting to capture the shadow of a tree in his video The Search (2023), Vahabi also incorporates his physical body into his act of resistance against extinction which is the central theme of his previous works (Image 7). As a continuation of the project that he developed during his graduate studies in London, this video performance signals that, in his future works, his activist stance will be even more pronounced. Now, he has openly raised the flag of rebellion against the loss of trees, and thus the loss of our future in the ecosystem. His effort might be as naive and futile as Don Quixote’s considering the extent of the environmental destruction marking our era; but for Vahabi, an honorable defeat is always better than surrendering without resistance.
(This text was written on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition “My Forest”, organized by the Sancaktepe Municipality at the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Congress Center in October 2024)
İpek Yeğinsü
Our paths with Khosro Vahabi crossed for the first time in 2018 in Istanbul. During and after the pandemic, the human-nature relationship and the poetry found in their delicate balance became one of the most popular topics in the global art scene, which had already formed the departure point of Vahabi’s art well before the pandemic. As I accompanied him in his artistic journey as a writer, curator and friend until 2022, I became a first-hand witness of his reaction against Istanbul’s ecological destruction. His belief that the latter can only be overcome by reestablishing the Istanbulites’ relationship with nature on a spiritual or even a poetic level, led him to create the project I’m a Work of Art (Image 1), which he planned to carry out at the Belgrade Forest. Here, Vahabi wanted the viewers to walk through the forest and discover the remnants of ten different tree roots, with their coordinates marked on Google Maps. As he regarded them as individuals with their own life stories, he would have treated them as if they were masterpieces displayed in a museum by enclosing them with gold-coated rope pillars. He would also have exhibited their photographs on a website accessible through QR codes, while he would have carried beyond the exhibition space the information on their species using a brochure, again accessible through a QR code. Unfortunately, the project initially planned to be inaugurated on the World Forest Day of 2020 had to be postponed due to the pandemic, and it has never been implemented once the artist moved to England. Yet, it currently deserves to be remembered once again as one of the most accurate reflections of his artistic approach.
Although his repertoire contains various instruments such as video, sound and performance, Vahabi’s “mother tounge” is certainly black-and-white photography. Drawing its strength from the light-shadow dialectic, The Fight (2018) series featured in his exhibition “My Forest” that took place in Istanbul in 2024, are an ideal example for the latter (Image 2). Here, Vahabi continues his tendency to personify trees, and transforms the visual tension based on contrast into a metaphor for humanity's never-ending state of war. A similar approach is also evident in his Dancing Needles (2018) series where he personifies pine needles (Image 3). This attitude is essential in helping the viewers empathize with the elements of nature they encounter in everyday life and enhancing their aesthetic sensitivities towards them. In fact, Unveiled (2020) directly addresses this state of neglect (Image 4), where Vahabi shifts his focus to the tree roots he had unnoticingly passed by countless times, engaging in a sort of self-criticism. For the CARVED series of the same year, he uses a new material to draw attention to the overlooked poetic details; by transferring onto fabrics the graffitis and drawings carved into tree trunks, he records the crossing histories of nature and humanity (Image 5). The Reunion (2018-19) series constitute another example of the alternative material experiments in the exhibition, produced in collaboration with his spouse Vajihe Sadeghi (Image 6). In this body of work combining illumination and photography, the East and the West, the traditional and the modern, the natural and the human-made come together in astonishing harmony, pointing at the unity of existence.
Attempting to capture the shadow of a tree in his video The Search (2023), Vahabi also incorporates his physical body into his act of resistance against extinction which is the central theme of his previous works (Image 7). As a continuation of the project that he developed during his graduate studies in London, this video performance signals that, in his future works, his activist stance will be even more pronounced. Now, he has openly raised the flag of rebellion against the loss of trees, and thus the loss of our future in the ecosystem. His effort might be as naive and futile as Don Quixote’s considering the extent of the environmental destruction marking our era; but for Vahabi, an honorable defeat is always better than surrendering without resistance.
(This text was written on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition “My Forest”, organized by the Sancaktepe Municipality at the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Congress Center in October 2024)
