‘Perched’ is currently on view at Museum für Völkerkunde, Dresden, from September 3rd 2020 through February 16th 2021

The Damascus Room at the Dresden Museum für Völkerkunde, a state ethnological museum with a large ethnographic collection from around the world, assembled during the colonial era, reopened to the public permanently in 2020 after a lengthy restoration. The history of the room is as fascinating as its restoration and present display: Wooden room panelling popularized in Damascus around the turn of the 19th century, then part of the Ottoman empire, and the wall and ceilings that once adorned a Damascene villa, were purchased by the end of that century by art collector Karl Ernst Osthaus, disassembled, moved to Germany and subsequently donated to the museum by his heirs.  

But the elaborate wooden interior panels would remain in museum storage for decades and their restoration began only in 1997. In the autumn 2020, the original setting of the restored room was intervened by Turkish artist Felekşan Onar, with her project 'Perched', consisting of wingless glass swallows, inspired by her reading of Louis De Bernières’ novel Birds Without Wings, chronicling the population exchanges between Greece and in Turkey in the 20th century. Yet Onar is hereby reflecting on the plight of Syrian refugees in her city, Istanbul, temporary home to over half a million Syrians, due to the ongoing conflict, and who had been an inescapable sight near her atelier in the Pera district.

These refugees seemed as if perched on the streets of Istanbul, like the birds in her project: unable to fly or to leave their current place. Displayed in the Damascus Room, 'Perched' addresses various temporalities at the same time: Not only the displacement of Syrian refugees today but the loss and destruction of cultural property in the region, transforming the museum with its colonial history into a site of memory of exile, past and present. The installation however isn't merely an aesthetic intervention: It begets the question of contemporary anxiety and homelessness of a people in flight, travelling aimlessly to safety in Turkey and Europe, not knowing what the future holds, or whether they will arrive safely to their destination.