Big Coral - Pearl İyibaş
BLUE EXILE ART PROJECT
MANIFESTO
The Blue Exile Art Project is a marine awareness project focused on preserving, enriching, and promoting sea culture. It is a sustainable underwater art project in Bodrum, where Halikarnas Balıkçısı lyricized his exile, in the multicultural and colorful city of Bodrum.
Many artists who have lived or continue to live in Bodrum have created works inspired by the blues, greens, and whites of Bodrum, and its unique culture. They have produced songs, poems, writings, and paintings that still have a lasting impact. With the theme "Rising Waters" in 2022, the Blue Exile Art Project will create a new perspective on the concept of art-space by collaborating with twenty-five ceramic/sculpture artists from Bodrum, each with their unique dynamic, and take viewers into the depths of the blues.
Ceramics is a material that has carried messages throughout human history for centuries. Through the use of earth, a material that is harmonious with nature and the sea, traces of our ancient heritage, submerged for thousands of years, will be preserved, and a positive mark will be left for future generations by today’s humanity. Ceramic sculptures will be submerged underwater, where the primary and holistic pleasure of art will merge with the rising sea. Sculptures and viewers will become part of the sea, and attention will be drawn to the sea once more. In this exhibition, each artist will experience their own Sea.
“When diving into the sea, it was as if I was breaking a mirror with a crash, and I would pass beneath it. It was a sparkling, green paradise.”
(Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Blue Exile)