Under my feet I want the World, not heaven

Women artists from İstanbul at Berlin Academy Pariser Platz
on the occasion of 20th Anniversary of Berlin İstanbul Partnership.
Yeşim Ağaoğlu, Gülçin Aksoy,Nancy Aatakan, Atıl Kunst, Nazan Azeri, Handan Börüteçene, İpek Duben, Nezaket Ekici, Gül Ilgaz; Gözde İlkin, Cemile Kaptan, Şükran Moral, Nazlı Eda Noyan, Neriman Polat, Necla Rüzgar, Gülay Semercioğlu, Nalan Yırtmaç
Curator: beral madra
“Under my feet I want the world, not heaven!” is my third major exhibition in the last decade that has an exclusive focus on the works of women artists . The title of the show is a slogan from the protests of 3000 women in Istanbul on 17 May 1987—an event which is discussed by Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz’s in her essay on the Women’s Movement in Turkey (2). The slogan is a creative intervention into well-known religious dictum which glorifies women qua mothers: “Heaven is under the feet of mothers.” With the religious nomination in the slogan, the sacrosanct position of the mother is ingeniously cut off from the worldly notorious women. At that crucial date, using this as their catchphrase, those 3000 women have designated a new turn in the position of women.
The title is challenging in the sense that it accentuates the revolt against being designated to represent the sacrosanct image of motherhood and not to exist otherwise. With the title I wanted to draw some attention to the continuing exploitation of the image of woman under the neo-liberal, global capitalism and prevailing religious, traditional and conservative dogmas, but the artists’ statements effectively reflected in their works do more than that...
Who and what can compete with the commodity and media culture and gain ground? The identity of women in Turkey is thoroughly connected to politics, religion, consumption culture and media. Since two decades the female identity is sharply divided firstly into “headscarf” and “no-headscarf”, secondly into “protected” and “not-protected”, thirdly “conformist” and “non-conformist”. These divisions once again show the prevailing patriarchal and dogmatic social structure. The female body experience is mostly connected to sexual abuse and violation of young or elderly women or to a body culture based on cosmetic industry. These issues are mainly tackled by women artists of this exhibition with their socio-political-cultural origins and effects and appear in their works as self-portraits, performances, documentations of their performances or as representations and
Woman artists in Turkey have been producing assertive, attractive and probing works since the mid 1980s, and currently they are receiving the international attention. One cannot deny the prevailing male dominant discourse within the modern and postmodern art making; but women struggle to get their economic and social identities along with their democratic rights and post-modern liberalism in the mentality of the society, which help them to become more independent. Post-modernity in Turkey was a step forward for them, but it was still not an easy task to change the status quo. In tune with the human rights and feminist movements, the women artists have deconstructed the meta-narratives and the traditional positioning of the outcast or oppressed women of all classes through art discourse and subversive art works. The women artists were aware that to be able to do this, the modernist mentality that structure of the society and its institutions has to be radically changed. Within this context, the probing, questioning, and shocking examples of contemporary art works carry an important mission and among them, the sharing, communicative, flexible and contributing qualities of woman artists’ works produce favorable results, even as these works remain largely unrecognized as political tools for radical democratization process by the women’s rights NGOs and feminist academics and activists.
The art production of 1980’s evolved into two directions: Painting with strong influence carried on local figurative and abstract tradition from 1960s and 1970s. The practice of conceptual art and installations emerged gradually with a more intricate socio-political and cultural content. In painting, expressionism lived its new birth with a bold figurative style, with subjective criteria and personal mythologies. Throughout 1980s a generation clash, a questioning of Western art, a rupture from the recent past, a yearning to the historical past and an affiliation to the international contemporary art making can be observed. The new approach to dilemmas such as tradition and modernism, high and low art, rational and irrational was to find points and fields of reconciliation between these dichotomies and in most cases the low, popular and trivial became more visible. Austerity and ascetic behavior was avoided for the sake of openness to different directions and possibilities.
The culture climate of the 1990s was deeply affected by the political and economical transformations. The economic transformation can be summarized as the intensive communication and interaction of the private sector with the world business, increase of export, foreign partnerships, specialization of the businesses and finally integration to the global economy. The transformation created its new social classes, among them the new middle and rich class that entitled to gain the character of bourgeoisie, but was also faithful to its ethnic and rural traditions. People from Anatolia have immigrated to the margins of the city, and to the abandoned parts of Beyoğlu district which belonged to the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities in the past. In particular, this at that time low rent district generated a new synergy when the artists, also preferred to live and work there, side by side with the newcomers.
From the cultural point of view the 1990s have opened a new possibility of being liberated from the burdens of a constrained Modernism, or celebrating the fall of Modernism. In this sense a new split has been experienced among the intellectuals, namely the ones who could not accept the fall of Modernism and faded away from the most up-to-date culture scene. In the meantime the diversification of creativity, the interest of the private sector in contemporary art and design works, the emergence of markets for creative products and the international exchange options have enforced the content and impact of the culture industry.
Without doubt the relations with EU within the framework of its enlargement and cultural integration policies have definitely changed the course of art and culture in Istanbul. The process started in the 1990s on strictly individual networking level and gradually developed into an institutional relationship, mainly between private museums, fine arts faculties, artists associations and other NGO’s. The projects and exchange activities were mostly funded by EU resources. This interaction was by and large possible in accordance with the influence of culture industry in the processes of global economy and politics so that the culture in Turkey gained independency, autonomy and the interest of the private sector. Precisely this progression prepared the rupture between the Istanbul based contemporary art productions and Ankara based cultural policy. While the state monopoly on the arts as the cultural manifestation of the modern nation state ideology is still prevailing in Anatolian cities, despite the current privatization movements, Istanbul art scene has gained precedence in the global art map.
Globalism introduced new possibilities of emancipation and became an ally for female artists. Even if it has never been too easy to change the status quo, this time the international exchange empowered the position of women artists. For opening up the field of the social for the hitherto excluded subjects–among them is women of all classes and professions–dominant meta-narratives have to be challenged. The modernist gaze of the audiences needed to be transformed and the institutional concepts needed to be reconfigured. Without doubt, such a vision of a pluralist society is yet to be realized. However, the so-called traditional female qualities of sharing, communication, and flexibility and the desire to collaborate are becoming more and more important and I believe that they have a great deal to offer in contribute to the fundamental changes that are already beginning to take place in our region.
The exhibition introduces seventeen artists of three decades and three generations who have the common aspect of being active individuals, provocateurs, activist-artists in a country which is simultaneously democratic, global, patriarchal, neo-liberal and nationalist. They and many others who are not represented in this exhibition helped us to recognize the importance of the use of verbal and visual language in our daily lives as well as in the democracy process and strived to make art that decipher the ideologies created by images and texts of neo-liberalism, which shape our culture and life. They manifestly provided new visual material and tools of thinking and criticizing the political and neo-liberalist intricacies.
beral madra: From the catalogue text: İstanbul Next Wave (Johannes Odenthal-Çetin Güzelhan), ADK, Berlin, Steidl verlag, Göttngen, 2009. Best. Nr. 1133 (20 EURO)