Yelta Köm

Cracks in the Soil, 2025

Architect, artist and researcher Yelta Köm presents a series of table-like

landscape models—fragmented, layered, and dissected by infrastructures

and borders—across the museum. Evoking surfaces from an operation

room or a forensic investigation, each fragment inviting situated dialogues

around land, memory, and the commons unfolds as a dispersed

geography. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers sit at the heart of water

scarcity discussions and governmental control struggles in the Near East.

Archival materials, field recordings, and speculative maps—gathered from

Türkiye’s southeast region around these two rivers—accompany these

surfaces, transforming them into living, evolving cartographies. Resisting

singular narratives around ecological infrastructures, feminist counter-

archiving, rural labor, and spatial justice, Köm’s counter-archiving

approach aligns with Donna Haraway’s concept of “staying with the

trouble”—embracing complexity, while practicing care, resistance, and

speculative reimagination. ÖÖD