Imaginative - FICTIONS AND DISSENTIONS

Fictions and Dissentions, 3rd International Canakkale Biennial

Curators: Beral Madra, Firat Arapoglu, Seyhan Boztepe, Fatih Balci, Deniz Erbas,

Imaginative

It is experienced on Sevil Tunaboylu’s multi-installation, symbols that fed on the same root but extremely different from each other return transitively to the same theme. As it can be met in her earlier works, there is femininity under the skin of not only her works but also her practice; in addition to this, and even mostly “being pertained to woman” is predominant. She represents woman in a situation but still represents her situation. The case has become the context which describes woman as woman.

In her practice, personal references and anecdotes from her life are permanently met, a story extending from social to personal, from corporate to particular is read by strolling around the entire wall. The wall is wounded with wars, missing persons, memories and Kalashnikov holes. In spite of the fact that mountain law, guerrilla life, brotherhood and reciprocal ideology are explicit on this wall which is the narrative landlady; when we get the root of idea tree, woman is woman who shows humility to the lens in a coy manner. Mountain is mountain. On the arrangement which resembles to schematically a requiem wall where parents exhibit photographs and diplomas of their missing persons; in spite of the fact that Nawruz Fire, which isn’t jumped over but smokes by itself on the summit of mountain, arouses highly melancholic feeling, guerillas’, whose hair tied up to each other, being “unique” is so mundane. For this reason, do not seek any implication in this narration. These are little real pills thrown directly from the conscious. These women are related to each other with their femininity, with their hair which is a symbol of their femininity and can grow longer after their death; with more limbic than consociation and with in highly feminine language on the geography where whoever goes to mountain goes to the unknown and mountain which can never be perceived as only a geographical component, but is read as unknown. This is a more private and closer tie than ideological unity, common problem and consociation. For this reason, they grow and carry their hair, whose mass and weight are heavier than their own mass, with them even at the front. This relation which isolates itself from social context, describes more sensual and a real alternative connection to modern woman who appears, on this painting, as if drowning in shallow waters and is constantly struggling for proving an identity at the same time. At one of the most striking moment of autonomous way of living which is different from indigenousness, we come across women combing each other’s hair by sitting in a line on the hillside on the portrait of the artist.

Strolling around the wall, perception of rootlessness is destroyed suddenly by the concept of being from a country – belonging, with the utterance of “As if I was walking to my identity”1. It is a female situation as much as abandoning nativeness by getting further away from language prison, and not doing this not for community’s being exploited, being get impoverished, is forced to migrate, doing this for walking by getting further away from assimilation policy, as long as walking “finding her identity”. Maybe, it is the last thing comes to mind, uncommonly and highly naïve in this chaos.

“She is a little girl in Wonderland, growing and shrinking, like Alice. Hers is an expression, a possession of not an “accomplished identity” but of a being process, a body changing constantly, a small part of universal flow. These are her “minor” existence. Any location on this world doesn’t describe them. Mostly, swinging of a vibrant line and its intermittent between “not yet” and “not anymore” complete them. However, social sciences are incompetent, which is peculiar to them, to search “minority” cultures. ..”2

On this highly personal work, while the artist is flashing on guerillagirls’ portraits, she looks for an alternative life by focusing on a “found object” which belongs to her childhood and maidenhood. Bagel, hidden many years ago for whatever reason, lost its peculiarity and turned into a memory, is the steadiest backbone between a memory belongs to an alternative destiny and guerillagirl’s private life. She is aestheticizing chaos she is in, like guerilla girl. On the other hand, if we don’t think so, mountains are mountains, bagel is bagel. Mountain is mountain, woman is woman. (Gumus Ozdes)

1 Bejan Matur, Dağın Ardına Bakmak, pg.69, Timaş Yay. ** Ulus Baker, Aşındırma Denemeleri, pg.205, Birikim Yay.