WHAT IS A TURK?
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The “Turk” as the “other” in the European culture is described by Western historians,
journalists, travelers, anthropologists and diplomats who visited Turkey in the Ottoman Empire
and the Turkish Republic: Rudyard Kipling, Edmondo de Amicis (Constantinople, 1896),
W. S. Monroe (Turkey and the Turks, 1907), Joe E. Pierce (Life in a Turkish Village, 1964),
David Hotham (The Turks, 1972), Robert Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy On Our Planet, 1994),
New Statesman and Society, 2 February 1996, and others.
The project focuses on the arbitrariness of cultural “stereotyping” and its persistence
by juxtaposing photographs with expressions of extreme ideas about the Turks.
2003
Postcard Series
30 postcards in six concertino packs
digital print on paper, stamped envelope
each postcard 16 × 12 cm
edition of 250
2003
Installation
60 postcards, front and back
overall size 50 × 192 cm
2004
Video, 11′10″
The video (2004) focuses on racial and cultural stereotyping: the Western idea of the “Turk” juxtaposed with images of Istanbulites from the late nineteenth century to today. Foreign residents of Istanbul share personal reflections on the city. Shown one year later within a separate installation.
What is a Turk?, The Skin, Body and I, SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul, 2021-22
Postcard and video installation, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, 2010