Alannah Robins at Pasaj Independent Art Space, Istanbul, 2016

This artwork concerns the ideas of homeland, memory and identity.

Alannah Robins explores ideas around the ancient practice of intramural burial in regions of Çatalhöyük SE Turkey and Tell Brak, in the Khabur of North Syria. In these prehistoric societies, the deceased were buried in hearth and oven areas in the houses. The burial of these children under the hearth was an act that kept family members at the heart of the home.
Today, voices are silenced, the migrant and the oppressed cannot bury their dead. Robins layers up these references of in-between states in a site-specific video installation, echoed in WB Yeats’s ‘night and light and the half light.’