WET FLOOR: NOT JUST CERAMIC

Yasemin Ozcan’s solo exhibition titled Wet Floor was viewed at Arter’s ground floor gallery between September 19, 2024 and May 5, 2025. Curated by Eda Berkmen, Ozcan visualized her narratives with different media and materials such as ceramics, photography, text, video, sound and performance.

HEDIYE CANGOKCE

Photos: flufoto (BARIS ARAS & ELIF CAKIRLAR)

Yasemin Ozcan’s solo exhibition Wet Floor explored the themes of intergenerational transmission, migration, and self-construction by delving into the complex relations between human beings and earth, language and remembrance, and autobiography and fiction. The exhibition brought together the artist's new works produced for the gallery space in Arter with her earlier works.

Soil permeated the exhibition, serving both as a basic construction material, and a metaphor for cultural transmission. The works highlighted the diverse ways clay is used and circulated, while drawing parallels between the transformation and movement of such materials, and the evolution of human constructs like language, identity, and relationships. Transforming everyday images and objects through subtle interventions, the artist draws upon the Alevi traditions passed down from her family to reveal different ways of experiencing gratitude, mourning loss, leaving a mark, and embracing nature’s cyclical processes.

The phrase “wet floor”, which serves as the title for both the exhibition and the newly created installation within it, is derived from an expression the artist frequently heard from real estate agents while searching for a new home. Typically used to describe “wet areas” which are in constant contact with water, such as kitchens and bathrooms, this expression also evokes precarious and insecure areas. Offering an introspective and humorous perspective on concepts such as lineage, transmission, memory, urbanisation and modernisation through fictional narratives, the exhibition Wet Floor explored the possibilities of accepting fragility and nurturing hope.

Artist and writer Yasemin Ozcan studied at the Ceramics and Glass Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. Her works have been exhibited in various institutions and art spaces, including Pera Museum, Galerie Nord–Kunstverein Tiergarten, nGbK Berlin, SALT Beyoglu, Arter, WKV Stuttgart, Wiener Secession, CCS Bard, Rodeo Istanbul, Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul Modern, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Depo, and Ludwig Forum.