ASIA NOW 2025

BB – Born to Bloom is a video installation that brings together two topographies: Switzerland and Kurdistan. Both landscapes are defined by striking mountain views that hold great symbolic meaning. The work exhibited at Asia Now consists of two channels: found pictures and videos from both regions are edited together in a fast-paced beat, characteristically mixing high and low, documentary and commercial, film and animation. Sahin’s signature brightly colored texts are superimposed over the flow of imagery with slogan-like, catchy phrases. The two channels are synchronised to the same pulsing beat and have parallel imagery and text, but they are not meant to be seen side-by-side. In its first presentation at the Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (2025), the two channels were shown on opposite sides of a large-scale LED wall.

Both landscapes, as different as their symbolic value may be, are politically linked. In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, establishing the borders of modern-day Turkey, thereby undermining the territorial sovereignty of the Kurdish people. To this day, the geopolitical power relations established at that time continue to shape the Kurdish mountain regions. Meanwhile, Lausanne has become a world-leading development site for drones, which, as weapon systems, are an essential component of the wars in the Middle East. Sahin has already focused on the Swiss dychotomy between neutrality and arms production in her 2023 video Weapon in the Closet, which used video game visuals to introduce war scenarios into the serene Alps. In BB – Born to Bloom she continues the investigation and directly juxtaposes Switzerland and Kurdistan, while flipping the expected visuals: on the Swiss side, weapons dominate the landscape, while on the Kurdish side scenes of people, animals and daily life come first.

A new series of panels features acrylic flowers encased in epoxy resin. Bright colors, artificiality, glossy surfaces, and sparkly motifs are stylistic elements that Sahin uses to address complex themes through a pop- cultural lens. With these panels, the artist plays with the aesthetics of oversized nail art and the stereotypical ideas which might consider flowers and extra-long gel nails devalued attributes of femininity. Flowers and their cultural associations have also been a topic addressed in Sahin’s film installations, BB — Born to Bloom. The work uses two flowers as metaphors: on the one hand, Gula Xemgîn, the “sad flower,” representing the Kurdish myth that one can only be truly free in the mountains. And on the other, the Geranium, adorning balconies and gardens throughout Switzerland, where the flowers are such a familiar feature of the Swiss landscape that their red color was incorporated into the TAZ 83 camouflage suit.

Another series of panels relates to Sahin’s film ROAD RUNNER. The large-scale wall-mounted aluminum panels are unique works, their motif created by Sahin with an AI machine-learning image tool: first training it on her own work, Sahin used verbal prompts to generate specific pictures, and then fine-tune them, in effect employing AI as a tool for realizing images she had imagined. Printed on pearly-white photographic paper and mounted on aluminum, the panel combines images with short texts that introduce a deliberately ambiguous subtext: the phrases can be read as ironic, profound or sometimes simply meme-like and nonsensical. The panels featured in her film.

Cemile Sahin was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1990. She studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. She lives and works in Berlin.

Texts and narratives are an integral part of her artistic practice. In parallel, and in conversation, to her exhibitions she has published three novels: her debut in 2019, TAXI followed by ALLE HUNDE STERBEN (ALL DOGS DIE) in 2020, and most recently KOMMANDO AJAX. For TAXI Sahin was awarded the Alfred Döblin-Medaille. For KOMMANDO AJAX she was selected for the Vienna Literature Prize and shortlisted for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair.

In 2019 she was awarded the ars viva 2020 prize for Visual Arts. The same year she was a fellow of the JUNGE AKADEMIE at the Akademie der Künste Berlin. In 2021 Sahin received the AArtist in Residence-Stipend, awarded by the German Foreign Ministry in cooperation with the LVBG, the Association of Berlin Galleries. In 2023, she received the London-based CIRCA Prize (2023). In 2025 Cemile Sahin’s video work ROAD RUNNER (2025) was acquired by Museum Ludwig, made possible through the Junger Ankauf initiative of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst.

The artist’s exhibitions and projects include: BB – BORN TO BLOOM, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2025); Cemile Sahin. ROAD RUNNER, Fondazione ICA Milano (2025); Cemile Sahin. ROAD RUNNER, Esther Schipper, Berlin (2025); Sieh Dir die Menschen an!, Kunstsammlung Chemnitz, Chemnitz (2024); white sea olive groves, Malta Art Biennale, Valletta (2024); Sieh dir die Menschen an!, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2023); Gewehr im Schrank - Rifle in the closet, Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden (2023); A Song of Tigris and Euphrates, Kunsthalle Osnabrück (2022); manifesto of fragility: 16th Lyon Biennale, Lyon (2022); Identität nicht nachgewiesen, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2022); Arbeit am Gedächtnis – Transforming Archives, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2021); ars viva 2020, Kunstverein, Hamburg (2020); Where the Story Unfolds, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2020); ars viva 2020, Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2019) and Tell me about yesterday tomorrow, NS-Dokumentationszentrum, Munich (2019).

Her works are included in the collections of Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kunsthaus Zürich; Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin/Düsseldorf; Castello di Rivoli Museo d‘Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Servais Family Collection, Brussels; and Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (The Federal Collection of Contemporary Art, Germany).

Courtesy Esther Schipper.