Ahmet Güneştekin Yoktunuz (You were absent)

Imagine a wall four meters high, black as ash, built from everyday objects salvaged from the rubble: spoons, shoes, shattered windows—lives. This is the totemic work of Ahmet Güneştekin, a Turkish artist of Kurdish origin, whose exhibition YOKTUNUZ (“You Were Absent”) weaves together ancient myths and contemporary wounds in a powerful dialogue with the masterpieces of the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art.
His installations and sculptures—bold, vibrant, and layered—form a symbolic journey through the soul of the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia to Anatolia, across buried legends and collective sorrows. Behind each work pulses a political urgency: to give voice to those who have been forgotten. Minorities, migrants, displaced communities—absences that weigh as heavily as the deep black that defines his visual language, standing in poignant contrast to the pure white of Canova’s marble, with which Güneştekin engages in direct confrontation.
Güneştekin doesn’t simply exhibit art—he stages tension. Between beauty and devastation, past and present, official history and silenced memory. A call to look—and to remember—without turning away.

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