We live in an era of profound estrangement. Shaped by modern individualisation, digital polarisation and rising nationalisms, our sense of a shared life has been severely eroded. We find ourselves in societies where we are physically close yet increasingly distant from one another emotionally and politically. This fragmentation leaves our desire for belonging susceptible to narratives shaped by fear, while destabilising the very ground upon which coexistence is built. In a world where traditional anchors have dissolved, the exhibition revolves around a fundamental question: what does it mean to be ‘at home’?

If home is no longer a fixed geographic coordinate, then one must become their own home, a portable space in which consciousness, values and dignity are carried within. Yet this internal refuge does not imply withdrawal from the world. On the contrary, it necessitates a new form of togetherness, one that requires us to live with difference and to cultivate a sense of responsibility towards one another. This form of coexistence does not emerge from a romanticised unity but from fragile yet meaningful relations formed within everyday life.

Situated within a domestic space, the exhibition brings the works into an intimate field of dialogue. The pieces, which recontextualise the ordinary elements of domestic life, invite us to rethink boundaries, modes of belonging and the possibilities of living together. In this context, Residue refers not only to what remains, but to the traces left behind by shared experiences, encounters and lived time. As the exhibition interrogates notions of safety, familiarity and coexistence, it displaces the idea of home from a fixed place into a continuously reconfigured relational space.

Text by Senem Cagla Bilgin-Keys