SERKAN SARIER
Generation Kanacke
“Der Spiegel Nr.31 / 29.07.1973”
Zwölf Apostel Church | Berlin
November 5 - November 7, 2021
PILEVNELI is pleased to announce the solo exhibition by Serkan Sarıer between November 5 and November 7, 2021. The exhibition entitled Generation Kanacke “Der Spiegel Nr.31 / 29.07.1973” comprised of twelve oil paintings. Exhibition can be viewed at the Zwölf Apostel church in Berlin, Germany.
Exhibition named after Der Spiegel's article published in 1973, Sarıer questions the concepts of identity, belonging and ethnicity through the second and third generation immigrant communities who grew up in Germany's hybrid cultural environment.
“What is the cultural and personal pressure for a queer individual (TCK) 2 that represents the connecting link of two opposite communities? I am choosing various formats and multiple artistic disciplines to explore a persisting confusion regarding hierarchy, sexuality, loyalty, politics and patriotism towards the native country of ones migrant parents and family versus ones own place of birth and upbringing.
“ Why do I still have difficulties to identify myself as German even though I was born, raised and educated in Germany “
The dislocation of a culture within an already existing one and the transformation of both existing structures and communities into a hybrid culture inform my work. As a gay son of Turkish migrants, born and raised in Germany, I am interested to identify how individuals may develop within cross cultures and try to understand, how they fit (or not) within the previously existing structures.
In my work I explore, in what capacity the TCK disrupt s existing cultural constellations, outside and inside their ethnical structures and how their sense of belonging manifests.
I would like my work to convey an unsettling familiarity, in a setting where two formal languages (abstraction and figuration) exist parallel and compliment/disrupt each other.Both, the abstraction and the figuration, represent different aspects of the protagonists.”
Serkan Sarier
Realized with the partnership of 3537, Serkan Sarier’s solo exhibition titled Generation Kanacke “Der Spiegel Nr.31 / 29.07.1973” can be visited at Zwölf Apostel Church in Berlin, Germany.
1 Kanake (also Kanacke or Kanaker) is a derogatory word used in German-speaking countries, especially Germany to mean "wop". it was in the 1960s transferred with more ambiguous connotations to Southern European immigrants, and is now usually used with an exclusively derogatory connotation against people of Turkish or Middle Eastern ancestry.
2 Third culture kid (TCK) or third culture individual (TCI) are terms used to refer to children raised in a culture other than their parents' (or the culture of the country given on the child's passport, where they are legally considered native) for a significant part of their early development years.
