Mathilde Melek An
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Mathilde Melek An is a French-Turkish artist, translator, and media fixer whose multimedia art practice is deeply shaped by the dynamic interplay of her cultural identities between Normandy (FR) and Istanbul (TR). Her work explores themes of memory, identity, and multiculturalism through a blend of performance, immersive installations, and collective collaborations.
An has been involved with the Mahalla Festival since 2018, contributing to collective and performative projects across several editions, including Generating New Narratives (2018), Murmuration (2021), and Memento (2024). Her work invites audiences to explore themes of mobility, transition, and cultural transformation. More recently, An has taken on a larger role within the festival by co-curating alongside artistic director Sabine Küper-Büsch. This collaboration also includes her participation in a Creative Europe program supporting emerging curators, further strengthening her connection to the festival’s dynamic artistic community.
Mahalla Festival 2020
To cope with the COVID-19 pandemic the Mahalla Festival 2020 took place as a remote festival to overcome self-isolation, demobilization and paralysis.
The Mahalla Festival 2020 was implementing remote tools to keep intercultural communication and creative expression alive even in times of physical distance and to help to cope not only with the pandemic but also to create new forms of interactive communication and understanding between different communities in the world.
Wandering Tower
The Wandering Tower is the title of a surrealist short story by Sergej Prokofiev from the times of vivid migration movements on the edge of the world wars.
The Festival was quoting the title as a metaphorical frame for Mahalla 2020/2021. The tower of Babel is connected as a motive to the search for the origin of language and the access to the divine.
Murmuration
Murmuration refers to the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of birds fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky.
Murmuration looks also back on the migration movements of the 20th century in the interplay of international relations.
Palimpsest
The title, Palimpsest, originally denotes a piece of writing material on which the original writing has been erased to make room for later writing.
However, traces of the overwritten texts remain.
This paleographic phenomenon will inspire the artists of the Mahalla Festival 2022. They will be concerned with the use of resources in a
comprehensive way: in terms of ecological, economic, political, social and communal memory culture.
Memento
Memento as a term for artistic discourse shall serve to perceive absences and offer ways to inhale and exhale memory to avoid the acceptance of neglect. Mahalla Memento aims to create a new vision of tomorrow by asking artists to work on the everyday life of the overlooked.
The artists are free to use any artistic form or style. Innovative interpretations of the leitmotif are appreciated.
Mahalla Festival 2023
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart is the title of an art event curated by Elyse Tonna in the frame of the Mahalla Festival 2023 taking place in November 2023 in Malta.
It is a collaborative event of the Istanbul-based Mahalla Festival organized by the cultural organization Diyalog and Malta-based Unfinished Art Space, including site-specific artistic interventions, artists residencies and community-oriented activities.
Beyond What Drifts Us Aprt
Beyond What Drifts Us Apart (BWDUA) is the title of an art event curated by Elyse Tonna in the frame of the Mahalla Festival 2023 taking place in November 2023 in Malta.
The Memento Festival is supported by
The Palimpsest Festival is supported by
The Murmuration Festival is supported by
The Wandering Tower Festival was supported by