#GetmePPE for The Venice Glass Week, from September 4th till the 17th, 2021

With the installation #GetmePPE, conceived originally in 2020 for the Baskı Museum, in Turkey, later partially acquired by Victoria & Albert Museum in London for their ‘Pandemic Craft’ project, and now showing at the Venice Glass Week HUB, curated by Rosa Boravier Mentasti, Felekşan Onar questions our sense of common responsibility towards the environment, at a time of profound social upheaval.

The pieces for this year’s edition of TVGW includes works using original fusion glass imported from Murano such as the warm sunflower yellow, the cloudy clear and the iridescent black panels that have later been sculpted into face masks in Istanbul, marking this very unprecedented time in human history and raising consciousness of our precarious futures.

 In March 2020, when the novel corona virus reached Turkey, the scarcity of personal protection equipment, became a rapidly a political issue of the first order and a tool of propaganda and fear. As a response, almost overnight, groups of concerned individuals and private organizations raised enormous funds to supply the much needed equipment for our already strained health system. By the time restrictions for the first wave were lifted, the masks had become an ubiquitous element in our lives and therefore, also an addition to our never-ending waste production. What was once the shield between life and death, turned helplessly into uncountable amounts of garbage and pollution.