19 December 2023

Looking back: Metincan Güzel’s Final Performance

On Friday 15 December 2023, Metincan Güzel presented a series of installations based on research in the Afrikaanderwijk. To accompany the installations, filmmaker Okan Urun has written and will direct a script inspired by interviews he conducted with local entrepreneurs. The performance was staged by artist Can Bora.

In the summer of 2023, Zuid. Boijmans Van Beuningen calls for an art project that seeks new connections between art, heritage and local communities through collective learning, participation and social practices. We would now like to present the final selection: Metincan Güzel. With his project Too Close to Home, he was selected from almost 50 entries to participate in the Open Call 2023 at Zuid. Boijmans Van Beuningen.

About Close Too Close to Home

For this project, artist Metincan Güzel explores shop interiors of Rotteram Zuid, Whose owners migrated mostly from different cities in Turkey. Guzel considers these as diasporaric scenographies, that due to certain elements, can be described as magical, causing a spatial shift to either existing and imaginary places and times.

The knowledge uncovered in the research reveals new perspectives on political questions about juxtapositions that arise within the diasporic context, such as the idea of being both in place and displaced. Güzel opens up a conceptual discussion of what local knowledge, artistic production, and theatricality within this context can be, and creates opportunities to establish recognition of the described practices within the cultural field.