Mosaic on car parts, metal stands, audio. Installation of variable dimensions, 2024-2025
Something Else Symposium, organized by DARB1718, curated by Angels Miralda, Beit Al- Sinnari, Cairo
Suat Ögüt has been developing contemporary methods for mosaic-making based on the designs and patterns found at ancient sites in eastern Anatolia. His initial investigation based on bird mosaics resonates with Alexandria’s Villa of the Birds and connects the entire region through historical trade and visual culture. His new works integrate the theme of birds and their migrations across the Mediterranean to the common truck culture popular in the region where transporters decorate their vehicles to reflect their identity, religious ideas, and political views. Owning a truck in Egypt is not accessible to everyone, their high cost associates them with a family’s livelihood and their rich decorations are an expression often featuring elaborate calligraphy with verses of the Quran or the hand of Fatima. While sometimes humorous or fanciful, the emblems ultimately protect the drivers from misfortune on the road and connect the vehicle to the individual driver’s identity.
Ögüt’s mosaics are an ode to street aesthetics as well as a confrontation between the dreams of mobility and international trade that were once open and porous, like the sky for migrations of the birds, and the contemporary reality of a bordered and divided SWANA region in which the trucks often face impediments and impassible borders. The mosaic patterns connect the region to its ancient past while incorporating contemporary representations drawn from reproduced cropped graffiti and recorded urban sounds. Popular painting fills the urban fabric with slogans and prayers that become pixelated color-fields taken at aesthetic value, Ögüt elevates these painted phrases to the status of antiquities that define Egypt’s exceptional artistic heritage.
text written by Angels Miralda
