“The monsters are back! And they invade the exhibition space to tell us stories and sing opposition songs. For a more beautiful world down with your fear, rising monsters!” The ‘others’ of this story are monsters. They frequent places that the maps do not show, where the ships are not moored, and the compasses are surprised. It‘s a landless country. Where the world ends. Rumor has it that wild things live in a remote realm. These ‘other’ figures are the inhabitants of the border region where the mind is weakened and fantasies flourish. But, how did they become ‘monsters’? The etymology of the word ‘monster’ in different languages corresponds to the Latin monstrare (to indicate, to expose), and monere (to warn, to report danger). In fact, the monster has long been in existence in relation to the unseen – seeing, showing and existing. What type of ‘monsters’ do we invoke today? DEMONST(E)RATING THE UNTAMABLE MONSTER is a simple expression of a complex thought – the infrastructure of how images operate. The artist’s response to stereotypes produced in the mechanisms of dominant image production is a symbolic, yet critical opposition. His research-based practice pursues the meaning loaded into ‘otherness’, and the image of the ‘other’ as a monster that finds itself in such mechanisms. Cihad Caner presents a conversation between fictitious monsters and animated avatars in a two-channel video installation. These monsters are unfamiliar; they differ from the images that represent them in mainstream media, targeted to shape our minds. The body of the monster is a political claim on its own; they threaten the known with unknown. Right here they do not want to be represented, but appear in order to exist. They occupy exhibition space and ask us to witness their existence. They sing for us: “Love me, you better love; because I’m not going anywhere without you.” Inspired by various monster illustrations in ancient manuscripts, such as “Acaibü‘l-Mahlukat” and “Garaibü’l-Mevcudat” by Zakariyā’ ibn Muhammad al-Qazwīnī, Siāh-Qalam’s drawings and Japanese yokais (monsters and supernatural characters), and “Gazu Hyakki Yagyō” written by Sekien Toriyama, Cihad Caner invites us to an encounter the ‘other’ and rethink the meaning loaded into their otherness. Seda Yıldız