Working Class (2025), takes as its subject İşçi (The Worker, 1973), a monument by sculptor Muzaffer Ertoran that once stood in Tophane Park in Beyoğlu. Over nearly five decades, the sculpture was repeatedly damaged – its fingers, legs, arms, sledgehammer and head destroyed in successive waves of vandalism, ultimately rendering it just a torso. On multiple occasions, the artist attempted to restore it, only for it to be damaged once again. Quinteros disassembles the form of Ertoran’s The Worker by scattering its limbs throughout the exhibition space. Rather than reconstructing the monument, the artist emphasises its ongoing disintegration in public memory and mythic afterlife by portraying it as a cardboard sculpture. Alongside it, a film, part mockumentary and part documentary, imagines a fictionalised sculptor considering his own endlessly vandalised work.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Pilar Quinteros (b. 1988, Santiago) currently lives and works in Basel. For the artist, the plastic and malleable nature of everyday life is a fertile field to explore possibilities of both materiality and meaning. Toying with these notions, the artist works with cheap construction materials, allowing them to seemingly build themselves in space. The resulting artistic output shifts between video, performance, installation and drawing. The artist’s solo exhibitions include Blood for Blood, City SALTS, Basel (2025); Orquídeas de la Patagonia (Patagonian Orchids), Espacio 218, Santiago (2023) Tigres Prestidigitadores (Prestidigitator Tigers), 80 mt2 Gallery, Lima (2019). Her work has also been exhibited as part of Three Tired Tigers, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2024); the 5th Creative Folkestone Triennial (2021); the 32nd São Paulo Biennial (2016).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Pilar Quinteros (b. 1988)
Working Class, 2025
Cardboard
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of the artist
Pilar Quinteros (b. 1988)
Working Class, 2025
Single-channel video, 16:9, colour, 21:38 min, stereo
Courtesy of the artist
Credits:
Directed and edited byPilar Quinteros
Actors: Ahmet Sarsılmaz, Ayşe Bera Özcan, Aybüke Özel, Pilar Quinteros
Camera operator: Emre Özder
Coordination: Leyla Bayrı
Art Direction: Pilar Quinteros
Cardboard pieces construction:Pilar Quinteros, Ayşe Bera Özcan, Aybüke Özel
Helpers:Arda Yenidünya, Büşra Yayla, Ayşe Bera Özcan, Aybüke Özel, Tuğba Erkutlu, Nisa Bakmaz
Extras:Nisa Nur Altan, Beyza Haskanlı, Rüya Eldem, Özge Yurdakul, Ümit Akça, Tuana Gökdeniz, Elif Dinç, Ayman Ismayılbek
Editorial Team: Hazal Yonca Birincioğlu, Yiğit Davutoğlu
Archive: Hafriyat, Yedinci Adam,2010
Locations: Karaköy / Meclis-i Mebusan 35 / Tophane Park
Istanbul, 2025
