Installation View, “The Hard Edge of the Labour of Time” Andrea Knezović & Yeşim Akdeniz curated by Àngels Miralda, PAKT Foundation, Amsterdam. 1 November – 7 December 2025.
Review by Elâ Atakan
The Hard Edge of the Labour of Time Andrea Knezović & Yeşim Akdeniz
Curated by Àngels Miralda
PAKT Foundation
Zeeburgerpad 53
1 November – 7 December
The Hard Edge of Labour of Time, curated by Àngels Miralda, is on view at PAKT Foundation from 1 November to 7 December. The exhibition brings together works by Andrea Knezović and Yeşim Akdeniz, positioned in a tightly woven dialogue that unfolds across the space. Using different materials and visual vocabularies, both artists articulate through their distinct symbolic languages the exploitation of popular culture and labour under capitalism, as well as the framing, suppression and pacification of the individual through identity politics, and the ways in which life is pulled out of its natural rhythm and drawn into a timeless void. In this context, Miralda’s curatorial approach, shaping the space as a layered site of encounters, adds an additional layer of interest to the exhibition.
Andrea Knezović, As Above, So Below (The Constellation Series), 2025. Large-scale vinyl diagrammatic spatial installation, variable dimensions.
When entering the exhibition, we are confronted with words whose letters grow increasingly larger, creating the impression of someone shouting directly into our faces: YOUR MERIT / YOUR RITUALS / OUR CULTURE / OUR GEOGRAPHY / OUR LANGUAGE / YOUR ATTENTION / OUR RELATIONSHIPS. This visual address comes from Andrea Knezović’s installation As Above, So Below (The Constellation Series). Drawing the viewer in from the very first moment, the work sets the initial framework of the exhibition: here, the decision-maker is “the other,” while the exploited subject is “us.”
Andrea Knezović, As Above, So Below (The Constellation Series), 2025. Large-scale vinyl diagrammatic spatial installation, variable dimensions. / Andrea Knezović, In Our Time, 2025. Kinetic metal installation, aluminium and steel, featuring seven spear-like metronomes 2x205cm.
The kinetic installation In Our Time fills the room with sharp-tipped metal metronomes whose swinging movements and percussive sound produce an intense sense of tension. Each one swings in a different direction, making us hesitate before walking through them. These metallic, threatening figures reveal how the individual tries to maintain a single life while navigating multiple, simultaneous time-realities, as if balancing like an acrobat. Knezović refers to a techno-cultural structure that imposes what she calls “chrono-diversification”: the crushing condition of an individual forced to exist within phenomenological, geological, historical, affective and labour-time all at once, unable to access their own inner temporality. This reading is further reinforced by the schematic diagrams on the surrounding walls, where opposing concepts generate an additional layer of tension around the kinetic installation.
Andrea Knezović, As Above, So Below (The Constellation Series), 2025. Large-scale vinyl diagrammatic spatial installation, variable dimensions.
Andrea Knezović, Your Space, Your Measure. Your Words, Your Rhythm, 2025. Hand drawings, diptych, paper & red pen. 21×29.7 each.
Andrea Knezović, The Anatomy of Anxiety, 2025. Hand drawing, paper & red pen. 21×29.7 double-sided museum glass frame.
The drawings composed of handwritten notations titled Your Space, Your Measure. Your Words, Your Rhythm and The Anatomy of Anxiety function not merely as repeated sentences but as extensions of what Knezović refers to as her “drawing scores,” performative markings rendered on paper. These inscriptions operate as a form of mapping in which affective labour and time are recorded through bodily rhythms, carrying traces of the individual’s effort to cope with fragmented, multiple temporalities. The directness of the handwriting and the recurrence of the phrases recall the vulnerability and humanity of the individual, making visible the fragile sense of helplessness we experience beneath the cultural, political and social frameworks imposed upon us today, like an open letter written directly to the viewer.
Yeşim Akdeniz, Loop, 2025. Metal, foam, paint, belt, hair. 160x13x25 cm.
Yeşim Akdeniz’s works, though more direct in meaning, accompany the tension line established by Knezović in an equally resonant symbolic register. In Loop, a piece constructed through a psychoanalytic vocabulary, strands of women’s hair are carefully placed and at times knotted inside men’s belts, making visible the fluidity, continuity and modes of resistance of femininity against the sharp, metallic, phallic notion of time. Passing through the framing structure of the belts, the hair produces its own living space with a movement reminiscent of water.
Installation View, “The Hard Edge of the Labour of Time” Andrea Knezović & Yeşim Akdeniz curated by Àngels Miralda, PAKT Foundation, Amsterdam. 1 November – 7 December 2025.
Yeşim Akdeniz, GUTE NACHT #1, 2025. Textile, silicone, paint, metal, upholstery, wood, 150x190cm. / Yeşim Akdeniz, GUTE NACHT #2, 2025. Textile, silicone, paint, metal, upholstery, wood, 150x190cm. / Yeşim Akdeniz, Repeated Temporary, (2025). Standard voting cabin, curtain, trash bag, rope. 200x90x120cm each
In Yeşim Akdeniz’s Representations #2, black mannequin heads wearing hijabs are placed inside suitcases that evoke migration, and together with the iconic white Adidas stripes, a symbol firmly embedded in popular culture, they point to a charged zone where gender, visibility, belief and capitalism converge. The inward-facing position of the heads suggests a state caught between enforced visibility and enforced invisibility, while their orientation toward a predetermined dark box intensifies this narrowing sense of pressure. As in the work with the belts, the individual’s story is read through the weight they carry and the increasingly restricted space available to them.
On the other hand, Repeated Temporary, a set of ornate voting booths framed by decorative curtains, prompts us to question how much choice we truly have when individual freedoms are shaped by bureaucracy and politics. In Walking on Eggshells, letters clearly sent by the state are wedged inside a black mailbox and surrounded by black eggs, revealing how the individual is not directed toward a free inner life within these systems but instead is pushed into the flow of a structure that is always on the verge of making them late. This configuration also reveals a condition in which the individual, pressured by such a system, is compelled to remain rational while being kept perpetually on edge.
Yeşim Akdeniz, Walking on Eggshells #8, (2025). Wood, metal, letters, 40x25cm. / Yeşim Akdeniz, Walking on Eggshells #6, (2025). Wood, metal, letters, 40x25cm.
Finally, Gute Nacht, with its soft silicone moon motif, points to the collective state of slumber we retreat into when confronted with the cultural and economic imbalances produced by contemporary systems. As is often the case in Yeşim’s practice, the work carries an unsettling structural truth beneath its seemingly sweet surface.
Taken together, the installations in the exhibition shape a cohesive narrative that reflects on the invisible pressures bearing down on the contemporary individual, entangled in shifting regimes of time, labour and identity, while also pointing to the subtle forms of resistance that continue to emerge within them.
Andrea Knezović, As Above, So Below (The Constellation Series), 2025. Large-scale vinyl diagrammatic spatial installation, variable dimensions. Yeşim Akdeniz, Representations #2, 2025. Luggage, textile, upholstery, wood, mannikin heads, plastic bucket, 80x70x65cm. / Yeşim Akdeniz, GUTE NACHT #3, 2025. Textile, silicone, paint, metal, upholstery, wood, 150x190cm. / Yeşim Akdeniz, Loop, 2025. Metal, foam, paint, belt, hair. 160x13x25 cm.