‘Have you ever been declared judicially incompetent?’ Turkish artist Meriç Algün Ringborg uses her own surreal experience as an immigrant in her challenging art, which confronts the bureaucracy of immigration.
“There is no room for feelings.” Stockholm-based Ringborg, who grew up in Istanbul, Turkey has had a lot of personal experience with the difficult and impersonal process of applying for a visa – and being accepted: “It was the first time I understood my position in the world being a Turkish citizen.” An understanding she has channeled into her thought-provoking work. She uses questions from visa applications, puts them on billboards and places them in unexpected places to not only confuse and bewilder the spectator, but also to underline the friction that immigration creates within a person’s everyday life.
Ringborg’s ‘Billboards’ (2012) is a comment on the rise of the extreme-right in Europe, and the heated debate on immigration: “We’re talking about people and human condition – and there’s nothing more important than that. And that still doesn’t seem to cross certain people’s mind because other things seem to be of more value.”
Learn more about Meriç Algün Ringborg at: http://www.mericalgunringborg.com/
Meriç Algün Ringborg (b. 1983) was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. She attended art school in Sweden and has lived in Stockholm for many years. In 2009 she did a piece called ‘The Concise Book of Visa Application Forms’ – an encyclopedia-like book, which contains all the visa application forms in the world. Selected solo exhibitions include Galerie Nordenhake, Berlin (2014), Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2013), Art in General, New York (2013) and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2012). Her solo-exhibition ‘Becoming European’ was shown at Moderna Museet in 2015.
Meriç Algün Ringborg was interviewed by Christian Lund at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, February 2015. All photos: © Meriç Algün Ringborg. Moderna Museet / Åsa Lundén.
Camera: Kasper Kiertzner
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2015
Supported by Nordea-fonden
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