Nevin Aladag, Raise the Roof, 2007, Performance and video installation. Courtesy the artist.
The central topics, music and dance, in the work of Nevin Aladag function as expressions of cultural identity and sub cultural interactions, and articulations in urban spaces. In her multipart work these two themes of her practice are joined in a new way. The video work Raise the Roof (2007) shows scenes of a choreographed dance performance on a tarred roof in Berlin near the Spree River. Four female dancers move, each one for herself, to songs that cannot be heard by the viewer. Nevin Aladag’s video work and its preliminary performance Raise the Roof deal with the connotation of control, and the liberation from it, the affiliation to a group, and the isolation within such through expression of a – particularly female - resistance. Aladag’s staging of this work has expanded on her use of familiar urban spaces taking us from the streets to the rooftop.
Nevin Aladag, born in Turkey, grew up in Germany where she lives and works. In 2007 she was chosen artist in residence for DIVA, Copenhagen, Denmark. Aladag took part at this year’s 11th Istanbul Biennial and has exhibited internationally in Reykjavik, Mexico, Budapest and other group shows including; Al-Mamal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem, Israel, Martiin Gropius Bau in Berlin, OPEN e v+ a 2009, Limerick, Ireland. Solo Exhibitions include Kunsthalle Palazzo in Basel, Switzerland, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and Centre d´Art Contemporain, Fribourg, Switzerland.