PRESERVING TIME

• Sevim Çizer's exhibition titled "Preserving Time" opened on April 27th at the İzmir Culture and Arts Factory. This retrospective exhibition, bearing traces of the artist's personal archaeology, can be viewed until May 9th. Here is Çizer's interpretation of the concept of 'preserving time,' which gives the exhibition its name.

PROF. SEVİM ÇİZER

“Preserving time” sounds poetic, but it’s actually a somewhat paradoxical idea. Because time, as we know it, flows by, and it’s impossible to physically preserve it. But humankind has found ways to “hold” the traces of time for millennia.

Preserving memories: photographs, videos, diaries… all are attempts to freeze a past moment. When we take a photograph, we are actually preserving a small slice of that moment.

Freezing time with art: A painting, a sculpture, a song, a poem… Even Salvador Dali's melting clocks question the flow of time. Art is one of the most powerful ways to feel and record time.

Memory and emotions: Sometimes a scent or a piece of music takes us back years. We don't preserve time itself, but the trace it left on us.

From a scientific perspective; In physics, time, especially with the Theory of Relativity, is considered something that can stretch, but it is still not "storable," only experienced in different ways.

Cem Adrian says, "I will keep you safe like an oyster keeps a pearl," meaning you are my most precious, you are within me. We often say that we should keep our secrets in the safest place: our hearts.

Özdemir Asaf begins by saying, "I will keep you safe. Believe me, I will keep you safe in my writings." To keep something safe means to put it away in a place out of sight for a long time; to save a file and sometimes copy it to another medium, etc. Time is the fastest-flowing and irreplaceable treasure of human life. Therefore, sayings like "Time is money," which advise against putting off today's work until tomorrow, or which invite us to live in the moment, emphasize the importance of managing time correctly and appreciating its value.

The Discipline of Archaeology and “Preserving Time”

The earth does not remain silent. Even if covered, it tells its story. People leave, cities collapse, the wind erases traces; but somewhere deep down, time remains unbroken. In the crack of a pot, in the silence of a bone, the echo of a forgotten footstep is hidden. Archaeology does not stop time, it listens to it. Everything knows its place within the layers of crumbling earth because time also accumulates, just like memory… The memory of the earth… At the bottom, the oldest secret, at the top, the last forgotten. And sometimes, for a moment, it remains as if in the midst of a catastrophe, as in Pompeii, the last breath of people still lingers among the stones.

Archaeology does not actually preserve time. It teaches us not to lose time. In this exhibition, which also has a retrospective quality, I concretize the accumulations of my own life archaeology, spread over time, with ceramic material.