ARTIST STATEMENT

When I came to be, everywhere was embroidered. I was not taught to see colour and forms; they were omnipresent as far as the eye could see. I was guided by my grandmother, mother, sister and aunt who nurtured me at their bosoms. The beauty of motifs began in the yashmaks of those for whom we could die for. Whenever we looked at their faces they were magnificently there.

Everything I was accustomed to when growing up enabled me to enjoy and love making hand made things, but I was growing up at the turning point of new eras. After my generation the emphasis on anything hand made began to fade. My aim is now to simultaneously live the old and new.

Making has been instilled in me by tradition. In the Turkey of previous eras pupils would wear an all black uniform and a pristine white removable collar. I remember my first collar most vividly.
I used a size 21 “tulip” brand-sewing awl and 70 sized ladies’ “oren” cotton. My finger was black and blue all from rolling the cotton, but I completed the collar within two hours and wore it to school.

At the time young women of marriageable age from my background in Turkey prepared dowry chests. Everybody, including me, had one. I started making my first object for the box when I was seven. Each piece is a result of eye-straining effort; I learned to adorn my future with my hopes. I crocheted feeling. Each embroidery was a message that could not be expressed to loved ones. My signature was on each chain I assembled and each object I processed. My colorful efforts glittered on the beads I placed on yashmaks. My fingers wandered on the prayer mat on which I sat to pray.

Now each time I try to marry the cotton string with a bead, cultural memories of the difficulties we experienced symbolically re-emerge. However painful, it may be, there are some memories that cannot simply be shed; those of childhood are amongst them. Undoubtedly engrained memories emanating from the past, the morals with which one grows up, the troubles, sorrows, stresses and strains one experiences are important factors which shape one’s future being.

Although I made these womanly things there was nevertheless, an existing conflict within me, a silent rebellion against gender based bias, parent’s controlling behavior, a chauvinistic society that made me eventually leave my country and become what may be described as “my own person”. The dilemma of being a woman seeking independence of mind and freedom of speech perhaps turned me into someone described as an outcast.

As a woman who has not been able to fully experience and enjoy childhood, as someone who experienced youth as a result of personal efforts, as someone who could not protest, as someone who has not been able to realise desires engrained within me, I shall try to expound my unfulfilled past with the objects that stem from that past.

Different people and objects may now surround me and I may have a different status in life. These may have overtaken those distant desires, which we were not able to realise; however the objects, which I hid in this chest, remain forever-loyal friends of my untold, unlived story. When I wander through such memory tunnels, the mothball scented dowry chest appears in front of my eyes, and then I suddenly snap out of it.

I had to give up on my dowry chest. The contents of the chest are the contents of a historical package accumulated piece by piece. It is a magical chest in which I buried a bundle of dreams together with my dowry.

I am exhibiting my stained history to face the regret and pleasures associated with the reality of my changing cultural make up and to share my cultural differences with each object
I crochet and produce.