Forthcoming

Things I Can’t Remember

Drawings & text by Antonina Gugała

2021

Artist and researcher Antonina Gugała’s pen-and-ink drawings are based on snapshots unearthed from her family’s photo albums, capturing early childhood moments of which the adult artist has no recollection. Consulting family members old enough to anecdotally recall her infancy, Gugała sets about filling in this biographical gap for herself, rerunning episodes from the past, albeit with the scene sometimes shifting depending on the reminiscing relative.

Adding annotations evoking captions of yesteryear, she reconstructs childhood memories long forgotten, if ever truly committed to memory. The process is further refracted through Gugała’s evolving thoughts on whether, why, and when to embrace becoming a mother.

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A Promenade at Home

Poems & paintings by Sevinç Çalhanoğlu

Translated from the Turkish

2021

In her practice as a poet and researcher, Sevinç Çalhanoğlu (My Life in Curves Recently) is attuned to the imprint of memory on physical interiors. In A Promenade at Home, her first extended poetic work to be translated into English, she also reckons with an interior’s ability to occupy its occupants.

Revisiting her childhood home in Istanbul in spirit, the poet overhears a conversation between her mother and the house itself, their dialogue a cantillated litany of renovations past and present. Meanwhile, the mother bustles about with broom and bleach, seeking to disrupt the settling of dust and malefic hexes in rooms that arrange themselves into a theatrical set.

Equal parts lyric and performative, A Promenade at Home is a meticulous cataloging of possession in all its forms. With cathartic intent, Çalhanoğlu excavates the microhistorical, retrieving memories muffled by carpet and silence.