The Characters: Epilogue II, 2018-2021. Photo by Katy Whitt.
Erdem Taşdelen
Wounded in Three Acts
March 27—August 16, 2026
Setting up the stage with melodramatic flair, Wounded in Three Acts marks a new chapter in Erdem Taşdelen’s artistic practice, and his first return to Calgary since his 2019 exhibition at The Bows. In dialogue with theatrical and filmic storytelling traditions, Taşdelen engages with performance to explore what it means to be human and examine the complexities of our imperfect nature. He seamlessly shifts across various media to create captivating fictions that feel strikingly close to reality, drawing attention to the political and social forces shaping our lives today.
Wounded in Three Acts weaves together elements of four recent bodies of work, presenting an audio installation, a film, graphic prints, and a live performance. Taşdelen’s artistic approach borrows from the strategies of theatre, contemporary fiction and collective action to engage with notions of power, solidarity and resistance, as well as human behaviour, aspirations and limitations. Unmade Films (2022) is a series of posters for imaginary motion pictures never made. Adopting the appearance of familiar visual formats, the series investigates cinematic tropes and invites viewers to envision their own versions of the stories these films may tell.
A carefully structured audio installation, The Characters (2018-2021) considers the unsettling trajectories of our possible futures. Partly recorded in Calgary in collaboration with EMMEDIA, the theatrical recordings follow the self-indulgent and mordantly humorous narratives of a set of stock characters. With their defining attributes taken from a text by ancient Greek philosopher and naturalist Theophrastus, these fictional personas are recognizable archetypes. In a condensed presentation, Taşdelen orchestrates ten distinctive monologues that reveal some of our less flattering human traits. The resulting dissonant chorus is at once unsettling and recognizable – an incisive portrait of contemporary society that asks us to confront what we might prefer to ignore.
Frictions (2024) is a moving image work that comprises twelve first-person narratives, each reflecting on the psychological toll of living alongside strangers in an era marked by polarization, technologically mediated hostility, and uncertainty about the future. Inspired by the artist's own dreams involving social discomfort and anxiety, the film’s narratives unfold against the backdrop of hazy, dreamlike visual sequences. Interludes of ambient soundscapes reinforce a sense of unease. These small yet charged moments of friction expose deeper societal rifts: the erosion of empathy, the projection of personal insecurity onto others, and the difficulty of meaningful social connection in a world saturated by suspicion and self-preservation.
Punctuating the exhibition run at varying intervals, A Long Dramatic Pause (2025-26) is Taşdelen’s first live performance work, which premiered at Studio Voltaire in London, UK this past fall. The narrative employs the languages of photography and theatre to explore strategies of resistance against ultranationalism and far-right politics. Twelve theatrical scenes describe a photographic image never shown but brought to life through re-enactment and visual analysis by a solo performer. As the performer alternates between observing and embodying an antifascist figure in the photograph, the narrative gradually implicates the audience, shifting their focus towards their own agency and collective presence. At Contemporary Calgary, Taşdelen collaborated with performer Cindy Ansah to develop a unique, site-specific version of A Long Dramatic Pause, guided by a written script and a set of corresponding graphic scores that also feature in Taşdelen’s exhibition.
Collectively, the works in Wounded in Three Acts examine the ways in which we negotiate living alongside strangers whose histories, beliefs and worldviews may be vastly different from our own. Examining culturally learned behaviours and drawing from distinct historical accounts, Taşdelen approaches these questions across different formats, looking at narrative itself as a device through which we make sense of our experiences and feelings, both for ourselves and for others. His works do not attempt to instruct or persuade; instead, they build situations in which we all must reckon with our positions and forms of complicity or solidarity.
Wounded in Three Acts is generously supported through the Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Assistance Program.
Curated by Mona Filip.
Upcoming Programs
Program Archive
Photo by: Sarah Bodri
About the Artist
Erdem Taşdelen
Erdem Taşdelen is an artist based in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada. Through the use of diverse materials and media, he constructs semi-fictional narratives that incorporate unique historical figures, events and texts to implicate contemporary sociopolitical realities. His projects over the past 15 years have explored themes such as life under authoritarian rule; the theatricality and public spectacles of political discourse; migration, displacement and the haunting presence of the past in contemporary contexts; and the possibilities for self-expression and the limits of authorship within culturally learned forms
Taşdelen has exhibited at venues including The Power Plant, Aga Khan Museum and Mercer Union in Toronto; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montréal; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg; and Pera Museum, Istanbul. He has been an artist-in-residence at the Delfina Foundation and Studio Voltaire, London; Hangar, Lisbon; Rupert, Vilnius; and KulturKontakt, Vienna. He was awarded the Joseph S. Stauffer Prize in Visual Arts by the Canada Council in 2016, the Charles Pachter Prize by Hnatyshyn Foundation in 2014, long-listed for the Sobey Art Award in 2019, and selected as a finalist for the Taoyuan International Art Award in 2025.
