What Will People Think (Site-specific installation)
Ventana Project Alt-Tempelhof U-Bahn Station, Berlin, Germany
October 2024

In her temporary public installation at Alt-Tempelhof U-Bahn station in Berlin, created in collaboration with Ventana Project, Esra Gülmen transforms a moment of private insecurity into a public act of reflection. Installed in a former advertising showcase between platforms, the work interrupts the daily rhythm of commuters with an unexpected emotional resonance. The setting—part transit zone, part urban stage—becomes a site for quiet confrontation with internalized social pressures and questions of belonging. Echoing Gülmen’s wider practice, the installation engages with personal and collective transformation in times of uncertainty.

What Will People Think

What Will People Think (2021) takes the unmistakable form of a tombstone, humorously and poignantly engraved with its title phrase. Nestled into a bed of real moss and soil, the sculpture mimics a small gravesite—an emblematic burial of judgment, shame, or hesitation. Rendered in engraved marble, the work monumentalizes a fleeting emotional state while inviting viewers to symbolically lay it to rest. Wherever it’s installed, the tombstone becomes a site of catharsis, gently urging us to question whose expectations we are carrying—and whether it's time to let them go.

What Will People Think, 2021
Engraved marble
70 x 50 x 13.5 cm
Edition of 5 + 1 AP