Stacks of disposable coffee cups, familiar objects from everyday life, and traces of an ongoing process of thinking… Forms that have not yet found their place, and a dense atmosphere of making absorbed into the space. What first appears ordinary slowly turns into another language in the hands of Fırat Engin.We find ourselves inside a practice that enlarges small details of daily life and displaces the invisible so we can think about it again. We begin talking about how speed, consumption, and repetition seep into the everyday; the unease within the shimmer, and the moment the ordinary becomes political. This conversation is not only about objects, but also an invitation to reflect on the space that produces them — and on our own habits and memory.
Your practice brings contemporary socio-political structures into collision with cultural codes. When beginning a work, what usually triggers you first — an event, an object, or a small detail you notice in everyday life?
It rarely begins from a single source. An event, an object, or a small detail that has almost become invisible in daily life can all come into play simultaneously. What truly triggers the process is the moment these elements intersect.
When I notice how an object that appears innocent and neutral in everyday life can rapidly shift meaning within a specific socio-political context, production begins. Consumption habits, repetitive behaviors, or even an ordinary gesture — once enlarged, multiplied, or spread across a space — can transform into a much harsher, even violent language.
For this reason, my work is nourished less by “big” events and more by the small fractures embedded in everyday life. In my view, the most defining political language of the contemporary world is hidden precisely within this ordinariness. Arthur C. Danto calls this “the transfiguration of the commonplace.”
Humor and visual metaphor are significant tools in your work. Is humor a way of making harsh issues visible, or a strategy for creating distance from the viewer?
For me, humor is not something that softens the issue; rather, it makes it more visible and more unsettling. Representing harsh matters directly often triggers a defensive reflex in the viewer. Humor suspends that reflex temporarily and draws the viewer in.
At the same time, humor does not create distance so much as it establishes a controlled proximity. The viewer begins looking from a point of perceived safety, yet that very sense of safety enables confrontation with the work’s critical layers. Humor, therefore, is not an escape — it is a strategy that exposes political, cultural, and social tensions more effectively.
You reconstruct everyday objects through the ideological tensions they carry. When does an ordinary object become political for you?
An ordinary object becomes political the moment it moves beyond function and begins to represent a habitualized behavior. A seemingly neutral object, once repeated, circulated, and contextualized, no longer carries only itself; it also carries the system that produces it, the mentality that consumes it, and the invisible consequences of that relationship.
For me, this moment often appears precisely when the object has settled into our lives unnoticed. Objects that are nearly invisible in everyday use actually contain powerful ideological weight. In my work, displacing them, multiplying them, or relocating them into unexpected spaces disrupts their innocence and reveals the political and cultural tension they carry.
The instability of meaning and the viewer’s interpretive role stand out in your work. How do you define the viewer’s role within this ambiguous space?
I do not see the viewer as someone who completes the work, but as a subject who becomes directly part of it. This approach was present not only in my object-based works but also in my early performative pieces.
In 2014, as part of 90 Minutes Show curated by Prof. Dr. Marcus Graf within Contemporary Istanbul, I realized a performance titled Front, Back, Right, Left. For 90 minutes, I folded colorful paper airplanes in front of the audience, signed and editioned each one, and then threw them directly toward viewers.
The viewer was not merely observing but becoming the target, making decisions, and physically engaging in the process. Where the plane would land, how it would be received, whether it would fall — all of it was uncertain. Meaning emerged precisely within those uncontrolled encounters.
Today, in works constructed through object and space, a similar approach persists. The viewer does not stand in front of a fixed meaning to decode it; rather, they move within the work through their body, perception, and experience, constantly re-producing it.
In Invasion, exhibited in Ferahfeza, you reference cultural transformation through disposable coffee cups. What unsettled or preoccupied you most in the genesis of this work?
I can answer this through Jean Baudrillard’s The Consumer Society. While Invasion invites viewers to reflect on their own daily practices, it also questions the regime of cultural memory constructed by consumer society.
As Baudrillard argues, consumer society transforms objects from tools that satisfy needs into carriers of meaning and status. In this process, behaviors circulate rapidly and lose value just as quickly.
In this work, disposable coffee cups function not only as consumption objects but as indicators of an automated, repetitive lifestyle. Cultural memory, within this cycle, shifts from depth to surface, from accumulation to momentary experience.
Invasion leaves the viewer with questions: In a structure focused on constant consumption, what are we allowed to remember? What is systematically rendered invisible? Within Baudrillard’s excess of meaning, how perceptible is the void created by the rituals and shared experiences we abandon for the sake of speed and convenience?
The 300 gold-colored cups create a simultaneously seductive and uncanny image. How should we read the role of gold here?
Gold here does not merely signify value and attraction; it also evokes empty bullet casings. Especially when scattered across the floor, the cups cease to be consumption objects and begin to resemble traces left behind after an invisible conflict. The bullet itself is absent, yet its impact remains.
Gold becomes both desirable and threatening. On one side, a shimmering promise of consumption; on the other, traces of a silent yet continuous violence embedded in daily habits. The bullet casing metaphor implies that consumption is not only economic or cultural — it also targets bodies, spaces, and minds.
This dual reading sharpens the tension between seduction and discomfort within the work.
What collective habits does this transformation render invisible?
It renders invisible our collective practices of slowness, pause, and togetherness. Traditional rituals require time, repetition, and relational engagement with space and others. Speed and practicality minimize these relations.
What disappears is not only ritual but also waiting, touching, sharing, remembering. Coffee, once a social act of gathering and conversation, becomes fuel consumed in motion. What becomes invisible is the value of shared time and the collective memory it produces.
How do you balance personal experience and social observation?
For me, they are not separate fields but intertwined structures that constantly feed each other. Personal encounters in my daily life often reflect broader social frameworks. The personal quickly opens into a collective reading.
I consciously avoid centering individual narrative. I use my experience as an example but construct a language that multiplies and anonymizes it. Thus, the work becomes neither confession nor abstract analysis. The viewer can locate themselves within it while also recognizing their place within a larger structure.
What questions does Invasion leave today’s viewer about cultural memory and loss?
Invasion invites not judgment but quiet confrontation. It reminds us that cultural memory is shaped not only by grand narratives but also by small, repetitive habits.The key threshold question becomes: In the name of speed, practicality, and comfort, what have we left behind?
Perhaps the most pressing question the viewer carries away is this:What cultural and intellectual spaces do these practices of convenience silently take from us?