Border Memory
Tracing Desolotion Between Life and Death in Van
September 2025 – June 2026
VAN
The exhibition project, "Border Memory: Tracing Desolotion Between Life and Death in Van," aims to document the migration routes, cemeteries, and spaces that bear witness to the silence surrounding the border in Van, located on the Turkey-Iran border. Based on findings from two months of fieldwork in 2024, the project aims to make visible through photography the unseen stories lived along the border, the silenced testimonies, and the traces of desolotion.
The exhibition aims to construct a visual narrative about migrant deaths, the traces lost in cemeteries, and the lives lost in the uncertainty of the border. This narrative invites the viewer to empathize and build a memory of lives trapped between life and death.
The exhibition, which will be held in Van, will also have a traveling structure that can be moved to different venues. The project is not merely an artistic project. It was conceived not as a production, but as a social dialogue initiative. The exhibition aims to engage with university students, NGOs working in the field of migration, and culture and arts audiences. Interviews, workshops, and audience feedback are also intended to deepen the project's social impact.
The "Border Memory" project was conceived as an interdisciplinary production that aims to connect human rights, memory, and unaccompanied deaths through the power of visual narrative.