ACTS OF CONFLATIONS
Sumac Space cordially invite you and your friends to the opening of the exhibition
ACTS OF CONFLATIONS
Agil Abdullayev (Frankfurt), Hüseyin Aksoy (Istanbul), Reyhaneh Mirjahani (Stockholm), Yasmin Noorbakhsh (London), Saayeh Sayyah (Tehran), Helena Tahir (Ljubljana), Yaqeen Yamani (Jericho Palestine), Abbas Zahedi (London) / collectives: Orta Okul and ZînKolektif
curated by Davood Madadpoor
OPENING: SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER, 6–9 PM
Sept. 13, 7:30 pm
Dance performance (more details soon)
Sept. 14, 6 – 7 pm
Activation of Participatory Installation
Holding the Dilemma, Sitting With the Question
with Reyhaneh Mirjahani
GALERIE AC. ART & DIALOGUE
Donaustraße 84, 12043 Berlin
on view from September 14 to 26, 2025
opening hours: Monday – Saturday, 14-19
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locations indicate the artists’ places of living and working
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, on Saturday, 13 September, Galerie AC. Art & Dialogue presents the exhibition Acts of Conflations, bringing together eight artists and two collectives selected from last year’s Sumac Open Call. It invited artists, curators, and research bodies who engaged with contemporary urges in socio-political circumstances of West Asia to submit their work and projects. The selection process was carried out by an international jury consisting of Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Dr. Nat Muller, and Angelika Stepken.
Agil Abdullayev, Hüseyin Aksoy, Reyhaneh Mirjahani, Yasmin Noorbakhsh, Saayeh Sayyah, Helena Tahir, Yaqeen Yamani, Orta Okul, Abbas Zahedi, and ZînKolektif share a research thread on identity, memory, and socio-political struggle, exploring how personal stories connect with broader historical and cultural forces. Their work examines the layered nature of individual and collective identity, often drawing on family and cultural memory while also addressing the challenges faced by marginalized communities. They investigate physical and metaphorical spaces as places of conflict, negotiation, and resistance, questioning dominant narratives. At the heart of it all, what persists is hope and resilience—the quiet but unshakable force that carries these stories forward.
Agil Abdullayev contributes with paintings that are driven by the video work Radicals Between Trees and Dicks, the result of research into queer cruising culture across Azerbaijan, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Drawing on visits to nearly thirty cruising sites—such as parks, saunas, and other hidden spaces—Abdullayev weaves together testimonies, personal memories, and regional history. Structured in eleven acts, the video and later the paintings blend individual narratives with the broader social and political pressures faced by queer communities in these regions. Five dancers perform choreographies based on the collected stories, offering a physical and emotional embodiment of shared experiences. The work also references Azerbaijan’s cinematic past, adding another layer to this exploration of intimacy, resistance, and visibility.
Hüseyin Aksoy’s ongoing work titled When You Burn the Past, the Fire Saves It, as Ashes focuses on the symbiotic relationship between a plant and ruins, presented through paintings as surface, found objects discovered along a trail, and a video work that unfolds as a narrative of time. In his video work Harmel, Aksoy draws attention to the plant known in Latin as Peganum harmala, which grows only in ruins and graveyards. The piece explores the plant’s connection to these sites and to what lies beneath the ground—until the plant itself seems to speak. Can it be said that such a plant speaks for the dead? By exploring the plant’s relationship with ruins, Aksoy attempts to read stones, remains, and ruins as ghostly entities—mediators for confronting the past. In this landscape, where the plant and ruins speak, he introduces silence as a third presence: a listener to the voices of those long gone.
Reyhaneh Mirjahani’s Holding the Dilemma, Sitting With the Question is a participatory installation, part of the ongoing inquiry An Experiment on Agency (2021–), which investigates how individuals and communities navigate agency under the pressures of socio-political systems, where choices are often constrained, conflicted, or unclear. For Acts of Conflation, Mirjahani presents Iteration #9—a participatory installation activated by visitors. The work invites participants to sit with discomfort, navigating the murky space between action and inaction, resistance and complicity. Through lived experience, it explores how agency is often shaped by hesitation, compromise, and constraint. Rather than seeking resolution, the installation opens a space to confront how we carry, negotiate, or refuse power within structures that limit our capacity to act and how we can account for a more subjective and embodied understanding of agency.
Yasmin Noorbakhsh’s paintings examine how selective perception—shaped by media bias, cultural projection, assumptions, and censorship—can distort our understanding of events. Her work reflects on the erasure of objects and histories, showing how meaning and complexity can be lost when seen through narrow cultural or ideological lenses. Her practice is deeply rooted in the experience of being in-between spaces—shaped by a hybrid identity and the uncertainty it brings. Through layered surfaces and interwoven motifs, she explores what it means to live between opposites: the known and the unknown, the West and the East—spaces where boundaries blur, and new meanings take shape.
In this exhibition, Orta Okul investigates its central themes—educational justice, anti-institutional pedagogy, and community-led cultural production—through an open, evolving format. The mobile structure becomes a living site of interaction, where the content and spatial configuration shift in response to audience engagement and contributions from other participating artists. In line with Orta Okul’s broader practice, the work draws on lived experience to challenge dominant definitions of art and artist, resist institutional authority, and cultivate spaces of encounter shaped by dialogue, collaboration, and mutual care.
Saayeh Sayyah’s Harass photographs series reflects a negotiation between personal and social space during a time marked by restriction and uncertainty. Through an intimate visual language, the work explores how external realities are absorbed, transformed, and redefined within the boundaries of personal experience. It captures a sense of vulnerability—perhaps even fear—associated with navigating public space with a camera, offering a quiet yet powerful reflection on the complexities of self-expression in a controlled environment.
The Last Sector II explores Helena Tahir’s father’s hidden past alongside her reflections on visiting his homeland, Iraq—a place he fled under a repressive regime and has not returned to since. The title refers to the 38th sector of Sadr City, the outer edge of Baghdad where her family once lived. This ongoing interdisciplinary project serves as a tribute to her father, drawing on personal memories, shared family stories, and impressions from the visit. Yet the images presented are not historical records. Instead, they act as symbolic reconstructions of memories once buried—now unearthed and reshaped into a new narrative: cohesive in intent, yet fragmented by time, distance, and loss.
Yaqeen Yamani presents Checking In, a text-based work composed of 18 messages sent to Palestinians during the ongoing genocidal acts and the immense human suffering of the civilian population in Gaza. This collective piece was developed through conversations with Palestinians living in the United States who have received “checking in” messages since October 7th. The work critically examines the performative language of care that emerges from systems complicit in violence—messages that often fail to name Palestinians as such, or to accurately describe the reality of events. By highlighting these everyday microaggressions, Checking In exposes the subtle ways language can be used to erase identity and suppress narrative, even under the guise of empathy.
ZînKolektif shared Witness to The Moment, a photographic project composed of six photo stories by six women photographers––Aylin Kizil and Fatma Celik from Diyarbakir, Serpil Polat from Dersim, Çiğdem Üçüncü from Hanau, Serra Akcan and Gülsin Ketenci from Istanbul. Each story foregrounds the idea that personal experience is inseparable from political structures. By documenting collective memory and showcasing women’s resilience in the face of oppression, the project seeks to inspire social change, challenges dominant narratives and celebrates the strength of marginalized communities—ranging from Kurdish, Alevi, Chaldean, and Assyrian groups rebuilding their homelands, to women athletes breaking gender norms, and communities affected by ecological damage from dam construction in Dersim. It also explores the concept of ‘home’ through the lens of Kurdish nomadic culture and its relationship to the land in Karacadağ. Through these stories, ZînKolektif gives voice to those often silenced, revealing resilience, perseverance, and the enduring hope.
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