Mondo Reale Screening and Talk with Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye and Ali Kazma

The film also portrays a pursuit of perfection that is respectful of accidents, fragilities, and irrelevancies—considered as central in Ebüzziya Siesbye’s relation to clay and its materiality. Her ceramics resonate with the mystery and the sense of astonishing disorientation evoked by the exhibition Mondo Reale—the curious observation of ordinary yet extraordinary artistic gestures that can transform elements like water, sandstone, and fire into creatures with a distinctive character. Something that Ali Kazma is very attentive to: questioning social organization and the value of human activity, he highlights the relationship between the visible and the invisible aspects of reality by looking closely at the management of labour, time, bodies, gestures, space and processes. The stories captured by Ali Kazma reveal the ordinary yet meditative process in a broad range of economic, industrial, scientific, medical, social and artistic spheres, having an interest in spaces of social significance, places of production, industries and handicraft.

Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye was born in 1938 in Istanbul, Turkey. Today she lives and works in Paris. Her practice exemplifies the notion of communion between a craftsperson and their material. Siesbye’s work can be found in the permanent collections of museums worldwide such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. She was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France for her Unica works, and the Knight of Dannebrogordenen in Denmark.

Born in 1971 in Istanbul, Turkey, Ali Kazma lives and works in Istanbul and Paris. He has a Master of Arts degree from the New School in New York City. Kazma represented Turkey at the 55th Venice Biennale —Pavilion of Turkey in 2013, and had a comprehensive solo exhibition at Jeu de Paume, Paris in 2017. Group exhibitions and biennials include 6th Kuandu Biennale (Taipei, 2018), 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2017), MAXXI (Rome, 2016), Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon (Lyon, 2013), 30th Sao Paulo Biennial (Sao Paulo, 2012), Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, 2001, 2007, 2011) Muzeum Sztuki Lodz (Lodz, 2012), Istanbul Modern (Istanbul, 2011), Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, 2010) and New Museum (New York, 2010). He has received the UNESCO Prize for Promotion of the Arts in 2001 and the Nam June Paik Award in 2010. He will present a solo exhibition at Nouveau Musee National de Monaco in December 2022.