Leyla Yenirce

In her artistic practice across multiple media, Leyla Yenirce deals with the representation of resistance as well as cultural, medial and military structures of dominance. She exposes the fine line between glorifying ideology and resistant emancipation, sensibly interrelating what is often assumed to be opposites: feminism and war, pop culture and genocide, desire, longing and irony.

In her first solo exhibition SO MUCH ENERGY at the Kunsthaus Hamburg, the artist interweaves life stories of different women who have resisted extreme grievances. The multimedia installation NACHT. SCHLAF. DIE STERNE, 2021 relies on an examination of the last days of the Hamburg painter Anita Rée, who committed suicide as a result of the burgeoning fascism. Violence, destruction and extinction are reflected in the projection of blowing hair, impelling noise and aggressive dynamics of industrial propellers. The haunting sound merges with the voices of British freedom fighter Anna Campbell and Iraqi Yezidi human rights activist and genocide survivor Lamiya Aji Bashar. he relationship between power and helplessness is explored in many ways in the exhibition. Through the force of the rotating propellers as well as on a visual and acoustic level, the exhibition becomes a physical experience.