Immigrant Skins, Gendered Bodies

Evren Savcı, Argonotlar, November 19, 2024

Translation: Çağla Özbek

Following the 2022 exhibition of the same name held at Salt, the publication İpek Duben: The Skin, Body, and I serves as a living document of (recent) art history.

Published by Salt as a continuation of the exhibition of the same title, which ran from December 9, 2021 to May 8, 2022 at Salt Beyoğlu, İpek Duben: The Skin, Body, and I stands apart from typical “coffee table” art books which often feature little more than a hastily written foreword accompanying an aesthetically pleasing selection of the artist’s works printed on glossy paper. Featuring Vasıf Kortun’s foreword, a lengthy and delightful interview between Vasıf Kortun and İpek Duben, in-depth analyses by Marianne Hirsch, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, and Işın Önol, as well as excerpts from a public talk titled “Modernism and Art in the 1980s” moderated by Beral Madra during İpek Duben’s solo exhibition at Maçka Art Gallery in 1991 with speakers Vasıf Kortun, Yalçın Sadak, Deniz Şengel, and Sezer Tansuğ in attendance, this book serves as a living document of (recent) art history. Duben’s retrospective exhibition, which I had the chance to visit twice, was accompanied by exhibition tours and various public programs in Istanbul; I also had the opportunity to organize a reading group featuring texts I selected with inspiration from Duben’s Şerife series, along with such works as Muscle Man, LoveBook, and LoveGame. It was through this reading group that I connected with several people whose paths crossed with mine again and again in deeply meaningful ways. Let this recount stand as both a note and a heartfelt thank you to Salt for underscoring how vital it is to “publicize” art—not only through free exhibitions but also through programs that encourage engagement with art, spark curiosity, and inspire new ways of forming relationships with it.

It is impossible for me to provide a concise summary of this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, without doing it a disservice. Therefore, I will highlight a few sections that left a particularly strong impression on me. While these reflections are not directly concerned with the visual documentation of the works, I can affirm for readers interested in this aspect that the publication includes a wealth of images, expertly capturing Duben’s works both in close-up detail and from a broader perspective, providing a more comprehensive view of the artist’s oeuvre than what was presented in the exhibition. Both the interview between Vasıf Kortun and İpek Duben, as well as the essays by Hirsch, Wilson-Goldie, and Önol, offer invaluable insights into how these works came to life, their place within the broader context of Duben’s artistic practice, and the impact they have had on viewers thus far.

In the remainder of this short article, I will focus on the extended conversation between Kortun and Duben, featured in the book immediately following Vasıf Kortun’s foreword and characterized by frequent disagreements between the two. There are two main reasons why I find this interview particularly compelling: First, it sheds light on the art worlds of Istanbul and New York during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s—a perspective shaped in part by Duben’s dual role as both an artist and an art critic. My perspective is shaped by my education as a social scientist at the U of Chicago, not by my role as an art critic. My critical writings, reviews, during a few years at the very early stages of my career as an artist did not shape my perspective, rather I was guided by my observations of social/cultural patterns of material forms and peoples’ behavior in every-day living in İstanbul in the late 70s and 80s. Secondly, this conversation captures the ideological, artistic, and political differences that emerged freely in their discussion, highlighting the conflicts that enriched their exchange.

The reason I find these disagreements invaluable is twofold. First, this text reflects a culture of debate that we increasingly have fewer chances to witness. In this interview, two thinkers engage in an open and respectful dialogue, freely acknowledging their disagreements without attempting to obscure or soften their intellectual differences. In the current political climate, it seems that such conversations may only occur among one’s oldest friends. From my perspective, however, I observe that individuals who feel that they subscribe to similar worldviews increasingly shy away from intellectual differences; they may experience ideological or political conflicts, in particular, as corrosive—or even as violent or hurtful—rather than positive and constructive ones. This conversation, however, stands as a testament to the idea that the very nature of thought necessitates intellectual differences for its development, transformation, and clarification, demonstrating that debate or intellectual conflict is an essential component of platonic friendship.

The second reason why I find these conflicts invaluable is the way in which they disclose the undeniable and complex bond between politics and art, whether it is articulated explicitly or not. Here, I conceptualize politics not in simplistic or straightforward terms, such as party affiliations or voting choices, but rather through our stance on fundamental principles like justice and freedom. For instance, İpek Duben uses the terms “traditional” and “modern” with greater ease than Kortun, approaching these concepts from a perspective where their meanings are perceived as more concrete. This divergence can be observed in their differing perspectives on “the formal characteristics of traditional visual language”, for instance. Within the framework of this discussion, Kortun challenges Duben by arguing that the boundary between “Eastern” and “Western” arts is not as clearly delineated. For instance, he highlights how the painters of Yıldız Palace created works rooted in the manuscript tradition and emphasizes that miniature painting was “(re)invented” during the modernization process as part of a broader search for its cultural roots. I would have, perhaps, objected to such generalizations by Duben, suggesting that the French (unlike the Turkish) never need to reflect on the notions of morals and honor in relation to women, but this is only a minor difference from Kortun’s apprehension about universalities, differing solely in terms of what we take issue with. At different points in the conversation, we learn that Duben and Kortun hold differing perspectives on religion, particularly Islam. In these discussions spanning topics such as the period when the New York art world embraced artists who could be identified as “Muslim artists”, whether Islam played a pivotal part in the development of contemporary art or influenced the existence of a community of “art enthusiasts” in Turkey, one can’t help but interpret Duben’s stance as modernist, while Kortun’s approach as deconstructionist.

On the other hand, when discussing Manuscript 1994 Duben gives us clues as to how she believes the dualities of modernity are merely thrust upon us, rather than corresponding to any tangible reality: “I use my body as a vessel where tradition and modernity would meet and break as I look at the past and the present.” Manuscript 1994, perhaps the most extensively discussed work in both this conversation and the book as a whole, is described by Duben as her “own holy book.”; this is a piece in which the artist assigns sanctity to the female identity and body. What I mean to convey is that Duben’s worldview, at times, leans towards a modernist universalism, and at other times, she disrupts the order of dualities created by these very concepts. Based on this, we can say that Duben’s art oscillates between such categories as universal and unique, modern and traditional, and that the artist produces her works from a position that relies on these dualities while not wholly accepting them as “reality.” As Marianne Hirsch states in her essay titled “Beneath the Mountains of Memory” included in this book, “these formal and generic elements shape the ways in which Duben works with and through the conflicting forces of presence and absence, exposure and concealment, freedom and constraint.”

Duben experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of producing her works as an immigrant artist lacking social networks or social capital in New York, during a time when neither being an immigrant nor coming from a predominantly Muslim country was celebrated.

Perhaps the disadvantages are more immediately apparent; this was a time when playing neither to “the market” or “the crowd” (both distinct yet deeply intertwined entities) was possible—a time when present day markets or crowds were not yet in existence. Because of this, Manuscript 1994 did not receive attention from New York galleries at the time (but was exhibited in three different exhibition spaces in the United States). The absence of markets and crowds, however, presented one advantage for creative individuals: While creativity is undoubtedly shaped by its surrounding conditions (as I do not believe in the notion of pure and entirely “free” creativity in this sense), this also meant that the trends dictating which influences became focal points, and which subjects were deemed displayable or marketable, did not exist, either. This brings creativity to the very precipice of what we call “freedom”—a state we can never fully achieve, yet perpetually strive to approximate. On the other hand, the way Duben highlights how “certain artists” are “implicitly deemed as the so-called official representatives of contemporary art in Turkey and worthy of being included in international collections” reveals a certain heartbreak regarding how she herself was not situated where she wanted to be, and where she deserved to be, within Turkey’s contemporary art circles. This is a reality often encountered by artists who migrated at a young age, as well as other migrants: abandoning the social ties of their “homeland” along with the advantages those connections may offer (if they were privileged to have them in the first place), and attempting to build a life from scratch in a world where they are unknown, leaving them at a disadvantage not in one, but in two different places.

We can say that İpek Duben’s own story ended on a happy note. This book serves as an object that both signifies and bears witness to this happy ending. On the other hand, all that is conveyed within its covers invites us to reflect not only on the relationship between the art market and the economy, but also on the way in which it is influenced by the political and philosophical perspectives of its time.

So, I can’t help but wonder: Who are the İpek Dubens of today’s art world?