To Thread Air

Description: Hande Sever’s To Thread Air combines a series of photographs and a film essay to explore the media-based materialities that underpin histories shaped by the Cold War. Sever began developing To Thread Air in 2019 after coming across archival remnants of a White House ceremony in which Kenan Evren—the right-wing leader of the 1980 Turkish coup—was awarded the Legion of Merit by President Ronald Reagan. The relationship between these two political figures and their mutual exonerations forms the backbone of the work, which interrogates how artistic and creative practices are manipulated to falsify information and rewrite historical events for personal and political gain. The film essay draws a parallel between Ronald Reagan’s acting career, including his involvement in the US Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit, and Kenan Evren’s post-retirement career as a painter. It critically examines how creativity can be wielded as a tool for revisionism and redemption by perpetrators of violence. To Thread Air traces Evren’s paintings and their collection by prominent museums and galleries in Istanbul, Turkey, raising critical questions about the intersections of corporate sponsorship of the arts, censorship, and the role of the artist within the larger framework of Cold War history. By juxtaposing Evren’s career as an artist with his violent repression of leftist artists during the coup, the work revisits the many sites from which public sculptures by politically engaged artists in Turkey were removed and destroyed due to their creators' involvement in progressive political movements. Additionally, the project explores Ronald Reagan’s role in creating the Hollywood blacklist, also known as the Hollywood Ten, dealing with themes of censorship, historical negation, and the use of creativity as a tool for revisionism and redemption. MORE

Materials: Walnut frames, archival prints, text and video.

Image Description: Installation views, ‘Hande Sever: To Thread Air’, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, 2023. Photo: Ian Byers-Gamber.