Cemile Sahin - A Song of Tigris & Euphrates

Cemile Sahin
A Song of Tigris & Euphrates
5 November 2022 – 5 March 2023

At the centre of her installation for Kunsthalle Osnabrück is the premiere of the first part of her film series Vier Balladen für meinen Vater [Four Ballads For My Father]. The film, entitled Frühling [Spring] combines her signature style of quick, bright shots and prominent text and graphics with a cinematic, plot-driven narrative. The film tells the story of the Kurdish family Bingöl, whose homeland was flooded by a Turkish water dam project and displaced its members between Istanbul, Paris and on the road. The family’s father was lost in the process, and his children vow to find him. Along the way, we learn through Sahin’s playful yet incisive direction about the politics of water in the region, a natural resource rivaling oil for its scarcity and power.

Cemile Sahin (*1990, Wiesaden) lives and works in Berlin. Most recently, Cemile Sahin's work has been shown in international solo and group exhibitions, including at the Lyon Biennale, the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (both the Akademie der Künste Berlin (2021), the Kunstverein Hamburg (2020), the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig and the NS Dokumentationszentrum München (both 2019). She published the novels TAXI (2019, Korbinian Verlag) and ALLE HUNDE STERBEN [ALL DOGS DIE] (2020, Aufbau Verlag), which are an important part of her artistic practice. She is an ars viva award winner of Visual Arts (2020) and a laureate of the Alfred Döblin Medal (2020).