Event series
15.-25. Oktober
Cemetery of the Nameless
An exhibition by Pınar Öğrenci
The Goethe-Institut Boston presents Cemetery of the Nameless, a powerful site-specific installation by Turkish artist Pınar Öğrenci that uncovers a chilling connection between environmental collapse, forced migration, and forgotten histories of violence.
Installed in the ornate nineteenth-century Grand Hall of the Goethe-Institut's Back Bay brownstone, the exhibition transforms the historic building into a landscape of memory and disappearance. Drawing on years of research in and around her hometown of Van in eastern Turkey, Öğrenci explores how a rapidly changing environment can reveal long-hidden stories of human suffering.
At the center of the exhibition is Lake Van, whose receding waters, caused in part by climate change, have exposed extraordinary underwater formations known as microbialites. Resembling giant corals, stalagmites, or fossilized monuments, these rare mineral structures have become the starting point for Öğrenci's unsettling investigation into what landscapes remember and what societies choose to forget.
The exhibition's title refers to cemeteries along the Turkish Iranian border where refugees and Kurds are buried anonymously, often identified only by forensic registry numbers. Through film, photography, and installation, Öğrenci traces stories of people who vanished while fleeing conflict, persecution, and economic hardship. Their stories intersect with earlier histories embedded in the region, including the Armenian genocide, border violence, and decades of displacement.
In a provocative artistic gesture, Öğrenci asks a question that is both poetic and disturbing: Could the minerals released from generations of unburied bodies lost in and around Lake Van have become part of the very microbialites now emerging from its waters? The lake becomes not simply a body of water, but an archive of collective memory, where environmental change exposes layers of human history that have long remained hidden.
Another striking dimension of the project is its use of drone and aerial imaging technology. The same tools increasingly associated with surveillance, border control, and AI-assisted warfare are repurposed by the artist as instruments of witnessing. Rather than tracking targets, Öğrenci uses these technologies to document fragile ecosystems, migration routes, and landscapes marked by violence and loss. In doing so, she transforms technologies of surveillance into acts of remembrance.
At a moment when climate-driven migration, border politics, and the ethics of emerging technologies dominate global headlines, Cemetery of the Nameless offers a powerful and deeply human perspective on how ecological crises and human displacement are inextricably linked.
Artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci (1973, Van, Turkey) lives in Berlin. Displacement, migration, survival, and resistance are cornerstones of Pınar Öğrenci’s films and installations. Her works are decolonial and feminist readings from the intersections of social and political research, everyday practices, and human stories that follow agents of forced migration. Öğrenci engages with place, site and architecture as the materialisation of violence. Her practice serves as a response to a collective past often left in silence and urging her audience to imagine a future built on justice, equality, and collective healing. By delving into local archives, she initiates a process of collaborative memory, engaging communities in questioning what has been remembered, erased, or overlooked. Her works have been exhibited widely at museums, art institutions including Manifesta 16 (2026), HKW (2025), Venice Biennial (2024), Harvard Art Museums (2024), documenta fifteen (2022), 12th Gwangju Biennial (2018), 6th Athens Biennial (2018), Sharjah Biennial13 (2017), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2016), SALT Galata, Istanbul (2015-6). She had solo exhibitions at Harvard Art Museums (2026), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG, 2025), Frac Bretagne (2024), Berlinische Galerie (2023), Kunst Haus-Hundertwasser Museum in Vienna (2017) and Depo İstanbul (2017). Her works included private and public collections such as Neue Galerie Kassel, Fraq Bretain France, Harvard Art Museums, Stadt Museum Berlin and İstanbul Modern Museum. She is awarded by Villa Romana Art Prize in 2024 and selected for Humbolt University inherit fellowship for 2026-27.
Installed in the ornate nineteenth-century Grand Hall of the Goethe-Institut's Back Bay brownstone, the exhibition transforms the historic building into a landscape of memory and disappearance. Drawing on years of research in and around her hometown of Van in eastern Turkey, Öğrenci explores how a rapidly changing environment can reveal long-hidden stories of human suffering.
At the center of the exhibition is Lake Van, whose receding waters, caused in part by climate change, have exposed extraordinary underwater formations known as microbialites. Resembling giant corals, stalagmites, or fossilized monuments, these rare mineral structures have become the starting point for Öğrenci's unsettling investigation into what landscapes remember and what societies choose to forget.
The exhibition's title refers to cemeteries along the Turkish Iranian border where refugees and Kurds are buried anonymously, often identified only by forensic registry numbers. Through film, photography, and installation, Öğrenci traces stories of people who vanished while fleeing conflict, persecution, and economic hardship. Their stories intersect with earlier histories embedded in the region, including the Armenian genocide, border violence, and decades of displacement.
In a provocative artistic gesture, Öğrenci asks a question that is both poetic and disturbing: Could the minerals released from generations of unburied bodies lost in and around Lake Van have become part of the very microbialites now emerging from its waters? The lake becomes not simply a body of water, but an archive of collective memory, where environmental change exposes layers of human history that have long remained hidden.
Another striking dimension of the project is its use of drone and aerial imaging technology. The same tools increasingly associated with surveillance, border control, and AI-assisted warfare are repurposed by the artist as instruments of witnessing. Rather than tracking targets, Öğrenci uses these technologies to document fragile ecosystems, migration routes, and landscapes marked by violence and loss. In doing so, she transforms technologies of surveillance into acts of remembrance.
At a moment when climate-driven migration, border politics, and the ethics of emerging technologies dominate global headlines, Cemetery of the Nameless offers a powerful and deeply human perspective on how ecological crises and human displacement are inextricably linked.
Artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci (1973, Van, Turkey) lives in Berlin. Displacement, migration, survival, and resistance are cornerstones of Pınar Öğrenci’s films and installations. Her works are decolonial and feminist readings from the intersections of social and political research, everyday practices, and human stories that follow agents of forced migration. Öğrenci engages with place, site and architecture as the materialisation of violence. Her practice serves as a response to a collective past often left in silence and urging her audience to imagine a future built on justice, equality, and collective healing. By delving into local archives, she initiates a process of collaborative memory, engaging communities in questioning what has been remembered, erased, or overlooked. Her works have been exhibited widely at museums, art institutions including Manifesta 16 (2026), HKW (2025), Venice Biennial (2024), Harvard Art Museums (2024), documenta fifteen (2022), 12th Gwangju Biennial (2018), 6th Athens Biennial (2018), Sharjah Biennial13 (2017), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2016), SALT Galata, Istanbul (2015-6). She had solo exhibitions at Harvard Art Museums (2026), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG, 2025), Frac Bretagne (2024), Berlinische Galerie (2023), Kunst Haus-Hundertwasser Museum in Vienna (2017) and Depo İstanbul (2017). Her works included private and public collections such as Neue Galerie Kassel, Fraq Bretain France, Harvard Art Museums, Stadt Museum Berlin and İstanbul Modern Museum. She is awarded by Villa Romana Art Prize in 2024 and selected for Humbolt University inherit fellowship for 2026-27.