SOUNDS LIKE HOME: Longing and Comfort Through Lullabies

Songs and tales have long been used as a tool to preserve cultural memory, reproduce cultural norms and social ethics across borders and time. Linguistic and musical memory are encoded differently in the brain with music as one of the most important stimulators for the formation and recall of memory. Inspired by their own family lineage’s experience with displacement from Greece to Turkey, Sounds Like Home curators Bengü Gün and Duygu Gün uncover how lullabies can be a source of comfort when longing for home and place, challenges it’s subliminal messaging that reproduces oppressive power structures and affirms that culture is fluid.

Featuring visual artists, musicians, folklorists, and researchers across fields of study, this multidisciplinary exhibition demonstrates the universality of lullabies. We can find cultural patterns and values when we trace the historical lineage of a lullaby to a specific site or region. Lullabies archive the perspectives and experiences of caregivers as storytellers. As a form, lullabies become vehicles for cultural memory, exchange, and identity formation. Sounds Like Home asks, “Is there a connection between lullabies across languages and cultures? How does the way we exchange these messages change over time?”

ABOUT CURATORS

Duygu Gün and Bengü Gün are identical twins born and raised in Turkey and they both studied at Boğaziçi University, Business Administration Department. Bengü chose a path in cultural heritage management and wrote her M.A. thesis on Musical Instrument Museums Collection Management Policies at Koç University. She has consulted the Dubai Culture Foundation on developing their organizational strategies and on how to develop a cultural hub in the United Arab Emirates (2007). Bengü is the director and co-founder of the Mixer Arts Gallery, which is one of the most dynamic contemporary art centers since its foundation in 2012 in Istanbul. Mixer especially serves young and emerging artists as well as collectors who are seeking to discover young talents, and it provides a space and an online platform for emerging artists to exhibit their works. While working on independent curatorial projects, she also teaches ‘Gallery and Exhibition Management’ classes at Yeditepe University in Istanbul within the Arts and Culture Management department, and is the director of Gate 27 Residency Program located in Istanbul and Ayvalık, Turkey.

Meanwhile, Duygu’s curiosity for the ‘new’ (technologies, languages, cultures, people) took her on a journey around the world developing and launching new products and services at startups and tech giants; and expanding businesses beyond borders. Meanwhile, she also managed bands and curated performance arts events and collaborated with Bengü on the build of the web platform for the Mixer Art Gallery (www.mixerarts.com). Duygu moved to San Francisco in 2012 and joined the Emerging Arts Professionals fellowship program a network focused on empowerment, leadership, and growth of San Francisco Bay Area emergent arts & culture workers. As a musician herself, she has the passion to build bridges between the corporate/tech world and the local arts scene in order to generate local equity. She founded Festywise to activate underutilized public and private spaces into performance stages and create new revenue streams for local artists. With the same goal, she recently joined SFJAZZ Center to spearhead the Corporate Partnerships program.