Eda Aslan
Eda Aslan (b. 1993, Istanbul) is a Turkish artist whose installation and research practice explores memory, domesticity, and overlooked narratives within collective history. Working with archives, testimonies, and fragile spatial residues, she examines lost or unrecorded histories at the intersection of personal and public memory. Aslan studied sculpture at Marmara University and later pursued Time-based Media at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HfBK). Most recently, her work has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the Max-Pechstein Prize (2025) and the Karl Ditze Prize (2025). She is also the recipient of the Working Grant (Arbeitsstipendium) for Fine Arts (2026) from the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg. Aslan’s individual and collective projects, have been supported by various grants such as the Hamburg Projektförderung für Bildende Kunst (2023), Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Kunststipendium (2022), SALT Research Funds (2018). Her works have been exhibited on diverse platforms, including Franconia Jewish Museum, DEPO Istanbul, Kunsthaus Hamburg, IASPIS, 4th Mardin Biennial, and Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof. Aslan lives and works in Hamburg.
Tears are Falling But Never Touching Each Other
2025
Stainless steel, hand-blown glass tubes, seawater from the Mediterranean coast of Turkey
7 × 497 cm
Courtesy the artist
This installation by Eda Aslan (b. 1993, Istanbul) draws on the ancestral practice of tear catchers – small vessels also known as lachrymatories or ashkdan once used in parts of West Asia to collect and hold grief. Composed of hand-blown glass elements extending across the wall, the sculpture is filled with seawater. As it slowly evaporates over time, traces of salt are left behind, a quiet residue evoking mourning, absence, and transformation.
A poetic undercurrent runs through the work, echoing a moment by the shore: early darkness, rough winds, salt crystallizing on skin. Aslan’s work takes shape from the Mediterranean, a place held close, dense with histories of passage, encounter, displacement, and return. It is a site of deep attachment and enduring love, but also of rupture, conflict, and loss. This sensory memory is carried into the installation, grounding it in lived experience, where the body encounters the same elements held within the glass. Between mourning and healing, something remains suspended, unresolved yet present, suggesting that grief does not disappear, but changes form, settling into fragile, enduring traces.