In contrary to his last exhibition which was intended to be resolutely focus on the artist’s relationship with space, this new solo exhibition focus more on Uysal’s personal memory: his first emotions as a child, as an adolescent, his relationship with belonging, with his homeland, his family house and the figure of his father…

In the exhibition, Mehmet Ali Uysal, looks at his past and integrates these memories that have followed him so far in his personal universe. A feeling of anxiety growing in his mind like a nightmare: if these fragments of his own life were erased? The fragile link that connects thought to memory pushes the artist to go back and forth incessantly on this link to avoid breaking it and seeing his fragile memories disappear. Where did he grow up? What happened in his life when he was almost unconscious about his childhood?

Also, after returning to the places of his childhood, Mehmet Ali Uysal set out to recreate a series of installations and objects based on his memory, from his first emotions, his first sensations; such as fragments for fight against oblivion.

“In these houses where I lived during my childhood, I kept many memories, but these are memories that are increasingly fuzzy, both from a factual and geographical point of view. I am aware that my memory changes with years. Even if the very existence of these memories brings me a certain level of comfort, the loss of them makes me feel anxious. As we age, we lose memories and not just the bad ones, the good ones too. And I think that a part of us must try to prevent that from happening…” said Uysal.

Through this series of installations, we follow him in this journey and his doubts : from a group of childrens running after some tourists in a small village in Turkey to get some candies, to his first sexual excitement, from his first sea bathing which almost made him got drowned, to the visual shock of the sacrificed sheep for Aid… It is a sensitive and poignant journey. The artist shows us his most important personal moments in his life. It’s a sincere and personal story which could belong to all of us.

Mehmet Ali Uysal is known for his monumental in-situ sculptures with the power of changing our space perception. His permanent installations are in public and private collections around the world: Turkey, Belgium, France, Monaco, Sweden, and in the United States…

His most recent project Affinity was recently inaugurated in front of the Louvre Abu Dhabi by the Ministry of Culture as a part of the Special Olympics Project in 2019.