Goethe Institut, New York

This book launch for While the Dust Quickly Falls (Mousse Publishing, 2023) will feature a conversation between artist Fatma Bucak, curator Kari Conte, and scholar Heather Davis. They will discuss state violence and the climate catastrophe, through the lens of Bucak’s 2023 Kunsthaus Dresden exhibition, While the Dust Quickly Falls. Bucak’s video They burned it all (2022) will also have its New York premiere at the event.

Fatma Bucak: While the Dust Quickly Falls is published on the occasion of Fatma Bucak’s titular exhibition at Kunsthaus Dresden. The book, edited by Kari Conte, considers the relationships between political violence, environmental destruction, and climate change. Moving across disparate geographies in the Mediterranean region connected by the catastrophic impact of conflict and war, it dwells on the loss of biodiversity, humanity’s interdependence on the natural world, and healing. In works ranging from a living environment to performance, video, sculpture, and sound works, the artist questions how humanity is ethically implicated and entangled in ecological transformation and destruction.

The book includes texts by Ecem Arslanay, Kari Conte, Eray Çaylı, Dr. Heather Davis, and Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz. It is designed by Esen Karol and is supported by the SAHA Association.

_____________

Fatma Bucak's works address the plurality of histories through a wide range of artistic mediums. The relationship between political power and historical narratives is critical to her research. She is one of the American Academy Rome 2023-24 fellows. She had solo and group exhibitions at Fondazione Merz, MOCA Toronto, Castello di Rivoli, MAMAC Nice, ARTER Istanbul, the Jewish Museum, New York, Pi Artworks, GAM Palermo, ICA London, Spike Island, Bristol among others.  

Kari Conte is a curator and writer focused on global contemporary art. Her work is invested in ecological thinking and feminist perspectives. She is based in New York and Turkey, and is the curator of Fatma Bucak: While the Dust Quickly Falls.

Heather Davis is an assistant professor of Culture and Media at The New School in New York whose work draws on feminist and queer theory to examine ecology, materiality, and contemporary art in the context of settler colonialism. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022), explores the transformation of geology, media, and bodies in light of plastic’s saturation.