Seçil Yaylalı

Back to the Future II

with Jenny Berntsson

2016, Stockholm (Sweden)

mixed media

realized for Home Works, curated by Jenny Richards and Jens Strandberg 

co-commissioned and produced by Konsthall C and Farsta Stadsdelsförvaltning

supported by Moderna Musset and Farsta Stadsdelsförvaltning in collaboration with ABF Stockholm

How does a child articulate their thoughts or position when one’s writing and speaking are still under the process of developing? Can we imagine other political possibilities than the limits of language? How can art be a tool to articulate other political imaginations?

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These were some of the starting points for Back to the Future II, developed as part of Home Works, a two-year collaborative project between the art space Konsthall C and Farsta Stadsdelsförvaltning, the preschool of Farsta in Stockholm.

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Seçil Yaylali and Jenny Berntsson delivered a series of workshops at Stockholm’s Moderna Musset with 93 preschool pedagogues from the neighborhood that were inspired by Katarina Taikon’s book Katitzi, which focuses on how to bring politics into the lives of children through storytelling.  The workshops also included a presentation by Hans Caldaras, a Roma activist who shared his personal experience of growing up in Sweden without a home. These contributions created a framework for the artists to share pedagogic methods of narration and collective collaging; tools that the pedagogues could return to their preschools and use to address these political questions.

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Children then created human-shaped artworks with their teachers, which were combined by the artists and exhibited at Konsthall C; during the show each involved institute visited the space to participate in a workshop held by the artists, where preschoolers were asked to display their creations at the gallery, having the chance to reshape and modify the arrangement of the installation according to their preferences.