In his 5 minute long performance art video Triumph, New York based artist Ahmet Civelek destroys a Triumph motorcycle apart into pieces. Exhibited at Central Saint Martins in London as his thesis project, this video is accompanied by the left-overs from the destruction inside a glass container and keys for the destroyed motorcycle.
An ode to what things were once, Civelek’s installation complicates the fluid state of existing as a self. Furthermore, he ridicules one of the basic drives of the modern man: to own. Relieving the natural instinct to destroy, the artist’s act also stands as a mode of readjustment. The destruction of a belonging connects with a type of recovery and revelation, an act that also repeats in his Destruction Portraits.
Each video in these series of four one-minute videos shows an individual ravaging his or her belongings in front of the camera. In Jacqueline, a woman, following a recent divorce, is seen breaking her kitchenwares into particles while Fedele shows a man throwing paint at one of his own paintings. Either a new start or one big final, their actions embrace the bitter sweet life with its ebbs and flows.
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