irem günaydın

Details from ÆND

In her early solo presentation Ænd (27.02–19.03.2015, torna, Istanbul), İrem Günaydın articulated a spatial and typographic meditation on narrative rupture, performative text, and the materiality of endings. The exhibition, which unfolded in the intimate and semi-domestic architecture of the torna, a project space and publishing house, functioned simultaneously as an installation, a looped script, and an artist book.

At the center of Ænd was the manipulation of the typographic ligature “Æ,” a letterform that carries within it the ghost of two distinct letters (A and E) forced into one. Günaydın used this typographic fold as a formal and conceptual hinge: a threshold between letters, a prosthesis of sound, and a glyph that signifies both collapse and fusion. By beginning and ending the sentence with “Ænd,” the work inserted itself into the structure of circular narrative and semantic hesitation, a gesture that resists linear resolution.

The phrase “she veiled herself with the palm of her right hand” is dismembered and laid across the floor, spiraling inward and outward, like a syntax slowly detaching from its own coherence. Viewers encountered fragments of this sentence embedded in the architecture: crawling along the perimeter of the floor, nearly slipping into the cracks, looping back onto itself in the disused, tiled interior of the venue. What could have been read as a closing line, “and she veiled herself...” becomes the scene’s very condition: veiled, withdrawn, and deferred.

The accompanying artist book, designed in collaboration with Torna, mirrors this spiraling structure. Each spread isolates fragments of the sentence, producing a stuttering narrative rhythm. The interleaved spreads include brief, hybrid passages of prose-poetic description, alternating between Turkish and English, that detail obscure mechanical fragments, rings, cables, and almost-anatomical objects rendered with forensic intimacy. These textual interruptions resemble footnotes without anchoring points, or inner monologues adrift in an already-eroded text. The act of veiling becomes both the subject and the method of the book: language is covered over even as it is made visible.

\Within the broader arc of Günaydın’s practice, this early work marks the beginning of her engagement with paratextual and para-fictional strategies: the peripheral becomes central, typographic nuances bear narrative weight, and the exhibition is staged as both document and performance. It is also a reflection on the supplementary labor of support systems, pages, bindings, ligatures, marginal typographies, and how these ‘parergonal’ structures sustain, frame, or haunt meaning.

Ænd, as a title, is not a misprint. It is the deformation of an ending and the promise of its re-assembly. In its refusal to conclude, the work becomes a loop, a veil, and a glyph for recursive meaning-making.

Exhibition view from ÆND 2016, torna | Istanbul

Exhibition view from ÆND, 2016, 400x400 cm, woven carpet

Details from ÆND

Exhibition view from ÆND 2016, torna | Istanbul

Details from ÆND