On Füsun Onur, Hale Tenger, Aydan Murtezaoglu, 2003
You will not find them in the coveted stables of the Istanbul’s commercial galleries. You could however occasion upon them once in a few years in gallery institutions that that have willingly removed themselves, at the risk of marginalization, from the crass commercialization of the marketplace that better deserves writing ink to be spared.
They do not appear as opinion leaders in the newspapers, in the weeklies or on television commenting on an issue. It is as if they have been marked out existence by the local media. Nor are they employed in the art departments of the art schools, steer departments let alone becoming deans of faculties of art.
Who are we speaking of here? The women artist of course! If one constructs a narrative of contemporary art in Turkey, a narrative that I would succumb to, women artists of a certain ilk have been driving Istanbul’s contemporary art situation for the large part of the last forty years. This has usually been mind- boggling to visiting European professionals whose historical perspectives and prior perceptions of Turkey did not meet the actual situation they witnessed here. But this fact of presence/non-presence is neither simply reducible to a western case of institutionalized sexism, nor to an oriental position of the role of women in a predominantly Muslim country. Even if it were so, the more interesting issue would be to speculate upon how the conditions of social history and geography has helped craft a rather productive situation of a specific condition of contemporary art where women artists have been the agents of contemporary art without exactly the history which they crafted solely being feminist.
To sustain oneself in the art schools one does only have to be a strategist, but also to be stripped of overt signs of gender. To invest in the narrative of the provincial gallery situation, the cliches of bravura and machismo have to be displayed and insured. Otherwise, the credibility of the artist would be sacrificed. One can investigate notions of authenticity and specificity not in the visible signs of production but in the processes that remain unseen. Hence, the specific to the the case of Turkey can better be comprehended in a kind or urban production that shies away from the use of the egzotic or the local cliche.
A few years ago we had, off-handedly discussed with my colleague Erden Kosova, the history of contemporary art in Turkey as one of mothers and their bastard boys. The boys were bastards because the father was found unneccessary, not a force to be reckoned or rebelled against. There are very few exceptions to this syndrome such as the absent father in the case who would be Sarkis. He had been living away in another country, and who himself was marginalized by conditions that are too many too enumarate here. Sarkis had been a rumour taking material form in the 80s. The latest generation are the boys, the bastards, who stirred what was a sedate situation and introduced sexuality, volatility and finally, the empowerment of the contemporary at culture.
The reason Erden Kosova and I called the artists as “mothers” --although some of them are not actually mothers-- as opposed to “women” was not only because they passed on the younger generation a situation for contemporary art, but also because there was an overwhelming climate in the mother’s works that favored a tender approach to the viewer, an affection for their subject, and displayed an interest in things and objects that are unnoticed or intimate. There is furthermore a decidedly inter-personal attitude against violence on the body. Interestingly, the notion a practice that disfavors violence cancels out much of contemporary art’s concern with the transgressive. To the contrary, there is an understanding of respect for things of the world. A kind of gendering in the work is evident, but this kind of gendering does not necessarily foreground sexuality.
The early history of secularism and drive for gender equality in Turkey seems to have crafted at the same time a different kind of figure by replacing the traditional model and exchanging it with a cultural identity of properness stripped from all signs of excess for both genders. This had created an interesting prototype, something I had called many years ago as “clean family machines.” Many generations of artists came from these clean machine machines. They were all from middle class, subscribing to ethicality, and a missoned way of life. While this has no direct impact on the visualization the artist’s works, some of the attributes such as modesty are a clear point of reference.
None of the three artists in the exhibition, as qualified as they are, teach. Likewise, their very impressive biographies that could not be missed in the media go unnoticed. However, they have turned this situation of not-being-asked-for-much not only by institutions and media but also their families, in to a space of freedom to be cherished. I add the notion of the family here to stress that being in the field art, was a way to further exercise freedom and use the acceptibility and availability of the culture as a field. This further created a critical displacement from one’s immediate situation where the artist is both observer and observed, tangled in the web as both weaver and the weave.
Füsun Onur , Hale Tenger and Aydan Murtezaoglu are precise markers in the mother’s generation. The notion of the mothers here does not imply an actuality but as I wrote before, an positionality. From Füsun Onur who singly remained aloof from the fads of the times since the 1960s with here proto-sculptures and her self-initiated exhibitions, to Hale Tenger who arrived more than a generation later who embodied in her works from the very on, a concise and daring rebuttal of the political aphesia of the happy-go-lucky Turkey of the late 1980s with a political attitude but without a party-line, to finally Aydan Murtezaoglu who unlocked issues of gender roles of a very specific urban culture, they have all been singularly distinct.
