HUO RF…person, action, situation…

9th – 14th december 2021 
Museo Nitsch
Vico Lungo Pontecorvo 29/d, Naples

…person, action, situation… emerged as a series that looks at the concept of “shame” individually, socially, ecologically, and politically and elaborates the concept as discussion/dialogue through portraits, which I aim to expand into a broader perspective over time. As I looked at the concept of shame and thought about it, I began to see concretely that it varied a lot according to daily habits, professional practices, city-space, family, society, or physical/scientific/ecological awareness. I started exploring how the feeling of shame that one is trying to get rid of or formed as being unwanted is an individual struggle, how shame surrounds the person, how the society turns this feeling into an element of pressure, how and to what extent the tradition takes place in these experiences, at what stage the boundaries are noticed, the problems that emerge when the limits are removed and at the end what was left from the confrontation area. As I opened up about the shame that we suppressed the most and buried deep, I found in the answers to the three questions I asked for each work: why shame exists, where it came from, its source, how solid but invisible veil it is.

I asked the mentioned questions as follows:

– Would you consider sharing something that you feel ashamed of if there’s any?
– If you had such an experience, do you still feel shame over it after you’ve shared it?
– What are your common reactions when you come across something shameful?

I am continuing this series, which I started in a residency experience in 2019, with different portraits accompanied by the same questions, in Naples, where I came through the residency program of Fondazione Morra*. I engrave the answers about shame from art professionals with
different experiences that allow me to connect with the city on copper sheets because of its temporality and conductive material. We can also physically touch these works that have turned into a place installation, and we can form stronger bonds by talking about our shame.

*The residency by Huo Rf and Cağrı Taşkın (Odviz collective) at Fondazione Morra in Autumn 2021 is part of the program of cultural
exchanges Neapolitan Dialogues designed by Vittorio Urbani for Fondazione Morra.
**With Turkey ONE Association’s kind support in partnership with Fondazione Morra.