“The German artist Joseph Beuys, whose 100th birthday we are celebrating this year, integrated many shamanistic elements into his works. But this might not be the central connecting point of the artists exhibited in the garden of the German Embassy in Ankara. It is the disillusionment with the present that something has broken apart. Our world has become toxic.” (Healing in Joseph’s Garden)

As one of the works produced in remembrance of Beuys on his 100th birthday within the "Healing in Joseph's Garden" exhibition, Cyst was created by joining plastic waste; which the artists have already been employing in their practices, with waste oil; inspired by Beuys' relationship with fat.

Pouches made from plastic waste are filled in with waste oil before getting sealed shut within vacuum bags. These units are then stitched together. The solid and liquid waste oil collected from the German Embassy, ​​the artists' houses and the nearby restaurants freeze and melt under the environmental temperature change; and thus form a connection with the space they occupy. By changing phases through the night and the day; the winter and the summer, Cyst materializes as a cystic organism within the space it inhabits for its duration.

Inspired by Beuys' material practice and the theoretical background in his work, waste oil and plastic are tangibly laid on the trees as the current environmental problems. This tangible weight is symbolic of the heavy environmental burden of mass production and consumption on the world. This metaphor of mass production is further established by sealing the unique objects constructed of waste oil and plastic within vacuum bags and in this way standardizing them.

Cyst deals with the dilemma of petroleum and oil as raw materials, which were initially formed under nature's own mechanisms, leaving their belonging to nature by being processed repeatedly through human production and consumption; and thus becoming a responsibility and a weight that must be undertaken by humanity. A healing ritual takes place in the act of encapsulating waste oil in capsules made of plastic waste and repeatedly stitching them together.

“Beuys was interested in nature, animals, botany, and the environment. The turn to nature was his therapy. He saw it as healing from the problems and wounds of the world. The world, of course, is nature with us—the issues we are facing day by day, more critical and more threatening.

Trees and stones, fat, and felt are symbolic as materials for the environment and the power of creativity and imagination to transform our planet, to create a magical space. Recalling the materials Beuys used and combining them with their materials, the artists in this exhibition started to explore the garden as such a space.” (Healing in Joseph’s Garden)

“Healing in Joseph’s Garden” exhibition text: Andreas Treske

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