Mikail koçak EN

FR - EN

MIKAIL KOÇAK (BE) - Ekmek parası / Gagne-pain

Halfway between traditions and modernity, Mikail Koçak ceaselessly examines the persistence of cultural legacy and multiple identities arisen by exile. Activating, by a performative act on the opening, his intervention in our young artist glassbox, he recalls his personal history : the memory of his mother and her friends gathering together at each others’ places to make hamur işleri* in the Belgian’s Ardennes they were still taming.

*could be translated by ‘knead the dough’ or even the idea of ‘play the dough’ 

The repetition of an ancient gesture, the handcrafting of the bread, evokes the resilience of immigrant populations and the symbolic importance of an economic emancipation. A language game and a contextual significant are incidentally present in french expressions like faire son pain or gagner son pain (‘earning money’). Through the glassbox, Mikail Koçak displays to our eyes and ears the memory of this joyful conviviality. Then the recollection of nourishing instants, linking community and alterity, home ports of every nomadisms, incarnate themselves.
The pattern is also present through the carpet as an archive of a filiation, as a framework of a trans-generational semiotic. The repetition of the sign as a refrain,
enabling to share a common language.

Pauline Salinas Segura