Rabia Kalyoncuoğlu's solo exhibition titled "The Memory of Home" centers on the multi-layered relationship between space and memory. Through her site-specific installation, she invites the viewer on a utopian journey while also leading them back to their own past and memories.
The artist positions the home not merely as a shelter, but as a bearer of identity, belonging, and cultural continuity, questioning the changes between the past and present life.
The exhibition addresses living spaces transformed by the impact of societal changes and the effects of this transformation on individual memory through a sensory experience.
In the exhibition, the artist showcases the concept of home and its evolution over time. "The Memory of Home" examines how our life cycles have changed in modern times with shrinking spaces, individualization, and accelerated pace, whereas in the past, homes embraced much larger families, offered more spacious areas, and provided a more careful, serene, and slower life experience.
Home, in its changing form from past to present, is a structure that undergoes both physical and emotional transformation. The transition from extended family structures to individualized lifestyles; the replacement of strong ties with nature by urbanization; the shrinking of spaces along with the narrowing of the inner world… Kalyoncuoğlu makes these breaking points visible. "The Memory of Home" creates a familiar yet no longer belonging home atmosphere by tracing forgotten spaces and habits over time.
Handicraft, which holds an important place in the artist's practice, appears here not merely as a technique but as a conceptual tool. Kalyoncuoğlu, who blends personal narratives with traditional production methods, constructs a visual language that merges aesthetics with memory. Objects taken from daily life, which have lost their function or been forgotten, turn into witnesses of the past in this exhibition. Each installation carries the memory of a time, an emotion, or a relationship.
Within this utopian home she creates, the artist chooses neither to return to the past nor to completely forget it and adapt to the present. She conveys the congestion brought by modern life and the alienation from nature through the "fake" vegetation she constructs within the home in this universe she creates.
The exhibition treats memory not merely as an archive belonging to the past, but as a dynamic that gives meaning to the present and shapes the future. This sensory universe created by Kalyoncuoğlu tells the visitor that remembering is not just an act, but also a healing process. "The Memory of Home" not only offers a visual experience but also confronts the viewer with their own memory, with the pieces they left in the past, and with the traces they still carry today.
Rabia Kalyoncuoğlu's solo exhibition titled 'The Memory of Home' can be visited at Chi Art Gallery from May 22 to June 28, 2025.