Hussein Chalayan

A journey through space and time

At an abandoned car park, a turquoise one-person space capsule takes off for a flight from London to Istanbul. From metallic everyday noises, the sound develops over the course of twelve minutes into enchan­ting medita­tive music, which takes the viewer on a journey to a hitherto unknown world. The instal­la­tion with five video monitors shows how the spaceship hovers through the streets just above the asphalt and crosses seemingly unreal, computer-simulated lands­capes on its way to the Bosporus, the interface between Europe and Asia.

Metamor­phosis and trans­cen­dence are two of the themes that define the work of Hussein Chalayan, who moves freely between the fields of archi­tec­ture, fashion, and art. Born in Cyprus in 1970, Chalayan fled with his family to London as a result of the division of the country, thus experi­en­cing emigra­tion and rootless­ness firsthand. With the work Place to Passage, he distances himself from the topica­lity and short lifespan of fashion, focusing instead on supra­tem­poral, existen­tial themes of life.