Back Contamination
Humanity is likely to face extinction not through deliberate malice, but as a consequence of neglect, error, or systemic blindness.
Yonca Karakaş’s exhibition Back Contamination, on view at G-art Gallery from 12 May to 27 June 2026, exposes the speculative and unfounded nature of all scenarios that attempt to imagine an “after” of humanity.
Known for her hybrid compositions and the sterile, tension-laden arrangements she constructs, Karakaş, in this exhibition, draws on the threat-oriented selectivity that the human mind has evolutionarily developed, focusing on recurring narratives of catastrophe embedded within media and collective memory. She underscores how this constitutes a regime of perception that constrains thought and narrows the field of possibility.
Wars, environmental crises, and extinction scenarios are shaped not only by historical experience but are continually recirculated through cultural production and media, influencing the ways in which the future is conceived. This repetition renders certain forms of catastrophe more visible, while relegating others to the background. At this juncture, Karakaş’s practice navigates the limits of foreseeable scenarios, turning toward forms of risk that remain underrepresented, unshared, and uninscribed within collective memory. She translates this multilayered condition of contamination into a spatial construct through photography, video, and installations. The threshold space she establishes, along with the positioned figure of a mouse, intimates the possibility of transition; yet the direction and destination of this passage remain indeterminate. On a plane where boundaries dissolve, the very notion of transition loses its function, suspending its own meaning.
“Back Contamination” articulates how humanity’s projections of the future are contaminated by recurring narratives of catastrophe carried from the past and embedded in collective memory; rather than proposing a definitive “after” or a potential exit, it opens these assumptions to reconsideration.
The exhibition Back Contamination can be viewed at G-art Gallery from 12 May to 27 June 2026.