Single-channel video installation, color, sound
3 min


Voyage Pittoresque de Constantinople et des Rives du Bosphore is an album of engravings created by Anton Ignaz Melling (1763-1831). The Harem engraving in the album is the picture of a space in which weird figures of women roam. In contrast to the Orientalist tendencies of the period, there are no dramatic or seductive expressions. Women, illustrated with almost scientific precision, look as if they are thrown out of time. My interest in the Harem urges me to articulate these women beyond being objects of knowledge by giving them a voice and pushing them to reveal whatever they hide. I think that with some intervention, these women of the Harem, who have been imprisoned by the scientific talent of the artist, can reveal relationships of interest that are beneath the couple of reality and fantasy. I am trying to reach my unrecognizable face in my own culture, through rhetoric figures, representations and images constructed by the Western subject to represent and know the East. By oozing into the Harem, I want to put in motion the untamable and make these frozen images move to open up the possibility of resistance. – the artist


*1956 in Polatli, Turkey | Living and working in Istanbul, Turkey