Aladag’s artistic practice doesn’t argue from the position of a loss of cultural identity in migration and Diaspora. On the contrary it draws its content and contexts out of the convergence of these geographic and cultural spaces.

It discovers new forms of participation in the subcultures of popular culture “genres” of the suburbs and minorities. They combine a loss of tradition with self-confident new designs for one’s own identity, which seek to discover the “lifestyle of the minorities” as unexploited opportunities, and not just mere conditioning. This naturally contains a trap, because the method seems to correspond perfectly to current sociopolitical expectations: the perfectly assimilated individual. […]

Aladag works with sculptural intervention, media depiction, and low-tech video documentation. The interaction of these media provides an interesting dialectic on the associative handling of patterns of identification, and on expressing symbolism and actions in three-dimensional form. Both the installations and projections develop a viewpoint that demands a range of actions from the viewer rather than mere observation. Using the situations created by the installations and the sequences with amateur actors, in the architecture found on site – whether this is an exhibition situation, an art institution or a media format – she creates her own spaces.

(Excerpt from: Dirk Snauwaert, Die Verräumlichung kultureller Identitäten, in: Nevin Aladag Heft No.01, Alexandra Rusitschka, Munich, 2002.)