"right?", a solo show by Banu Cennetoğlu.
Zapowiedź: napisana przed otwarciem wystawy
Every article of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is spelled out here in gold letter balloons, one bouquet per article. There are 30 of them, and Kanal's opening is the first time all 30 have been shown together.
The work is called right?, and Banu Cennetoğlu has been making it since 2022. Earlier versions showed only some of the articles, at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. The balloons are left to deflate slowly over the months, so the letters sag and warp, and you read the rights as they lose their shape. Kanal calls it both a tribute and a warning: rights hold only while people keep them up. Gold letter balloons are usually bought for a 30th birthday, and this is 30 of them for a text nobody celebrates.
It is free, with no ticket or registration, in the Showroom on the public side of the building, in a city that hosts the EU institutions and NATO.
The 30 bouquets
Look for the gold balloon letters bunched into 30 bouquets, each one spelling out a single article of the 1948 Declaration.
The sagging letters
The balloons deflate over the run, so the words droop and warp; a visit in spring shows a different work from opening week.