GROUP EXHIBITION | The Hard Edge of the Labour of Time, PAKT, Amsterdam

Yeşim Akdeniz’s works are on view as part of the duo exhibition titled The Hard Edge of the Labour of Time curated by Àngels Miralda, at PAKT in Amsterdam until December 7, 2025. Bringing together the works of Yeşim Akdeniz and Andrea Knezović, the exhibition reflects on the constant necessity to produce in a society that does not leave space to rest or room to breathe.

This exhibition is about time, the impossibility of rest in an age in which tasks pile up endlessly. It’s about maintenance - time means you need to attend to things on a monthly/weekly/daily basis. How is this doubled, tripled, when you have responsibilities towards other living beings or when you’re waiting for a visa that is always imminently expired, for a rent contract that’s always about to end. Where will we be in a years ’time, two? Security is about eliminating temporalities, finding permanence in a world based on obsoletion and subscription models that thrive on insecurity.

Yeşim Akdeniz's new works are a set of sculptural assemblages that include two voting booths adorned with theatrical curtains and ornate embellishments, alongside suitcases filled with sportswear styled mannequin busts that reference contemporary design and the construction of national and religious identity. These pieces explore how fluid identities are created in an increasingly globalized world defined by institutional processes of migration, integration, and rapid technological change, emphasizing how our sense of self is shaped through coded symbols. Her sculptures reference the way in which design conducts physical movement, an element that remains in her work from past research on modernist furniture and mechanical labour. The juxtaposition of light and heavy textiles relates to access, privacy, and functionality in a critique of the performativity of contemporary democracy concurrent to rising tides of fascism. The objects invite us to reflect on the way that societal institutions and personal identity converge. Through their layered symbolism, these works reference the individual and the collective political body to speak on the intersection of class, economy, and identity, within the frenetic pace of institutional bureaucratic demands.