Just Arrived:
Here, There, Over There (2025)

Photography, Site-specific Installation

1. Photography Installation
80 archival pigment prints mounted on 40 MDF panels, displayed within wooden frames, positioned facing each other.
2. Photography Installation (3 Pieces)
Four archival pigment prints of varying sizes, framed.
3. Photo-Sculpture Installation
Photograph printed with UV printing on plexiglass, combined with iron ball bearings and an oven element.
4. Photography Installation
Pigment print on silk fabric.
5. Photographs
Archival pigment prints in varying sizes.
6. Video and Sound Installation
Three-channel color video and three-channel sound installation.
7. Video
Single-channel color video film.

Murat Kahya was invited to Corsica as part of the TamART program organized by the French Embassy to explore the themes of migration, geography, and borders. Developed during his time on the island, "Just Arrived: Here, There, Over There" examines notions of belonging and otherness through personal experiences. Rather than representing migration directly, the artist constructs an experience of otherness through acts of looking and movement. Beginning with a series of portraits, the viewer is led through a gradual journey of isolation, tracing a gaze that becomes increasingly solitary. This transformation is likened to a stone traveling through a river, constantly reshaped along its path.

Installations and sound layers within the exhibition space make the process of subjectivation visible. At the center of the narrative stands a fruit tree, serving as a metaphor for the convergence of different individuals and their diverse pasts. As viewers navigate the exhibition, reaching this central structure, they encounter the idea that belonging is shaped not merely by geography but by lived experience.

Sea imagery, changing with the viewer’s shifting perspective, underscores how the notion of borders is inherently subjective. Intertwining scenes of reality and imagined landscapes, including postcard-like vistas, the exhibition creates a timeless and indeterminate atmosphere. At the journey’s end, a video work weaves together personal gazes, experiences of otherness, and local narratives, forming an interconnected, fluid structure beyond specific time and place.

Through this project, Murat Kahya addresses migration, geography, and borders from an intimate perspective, making visible the idea that everyone, at some point, becomes an "other."