A mixed-media exhibition featuring works of art by contemporary Turkish artists exploring the effects of Turkey’s Sept. 12, 1980 military coup opens today in Diyarbakır, the southeast Anatolian province known for housing one of the most notorious prisons during the turmoil of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Delving into the dark period that followed the 1980 coup, which saw its 30th anniversary yesterday, the show, which opens at the Diyarbakır Art Center, is titled “13 September.”
The show is a continuation of another exhibition with a theme concerning the 1980 military coup, showcased at the Outlet Gallery in 2009 during last year’s International İstanbul Biennial, and it is also the newest show at the Diyarbakır Art Center, which was founded in 2002 as a civil initiative to showcase the works of artists from Diyarbakır and İstanbul.
In the last few years, the number of works in the art world in Turkey related to military interventions has increased dramatically, says the show’s curator, Azra Tüzünoğlu. “The coup d’etat of 1980 is the most commonly known coup in Turkey’s history, and it is now being questioned over and over in popular movies and TV series. These movies and shows have turned into psychoanalysis sessions for society. The political aspect of the issue is not really being discussed,” Tüzünoğlu says.
‘September 13’ is a continuation of a previous exhibition with a theme concerning the 1980 military coup, showcased at the Outlet Gallery in 2009 during last year’s İstanbul Biennial. It is also the newest show at the Diyarbakır Art Center, which was founded in 2002 as a civil initiative to showcase the works of artists from Diyarbakır and İstanbul
In the exhibition, the featured artists address their witnessing of the coup in a generally sarcastic way.
Among the works featured are a newspaper recounting the day of the coup and recordings from a “collective memory group” established at İstanbul’s Mimar Sinan University. “This group was founded two years ago and carried out a study related to the assassination of [Armenian-Turkish journalist] Hrant Dink and another one on the 1980 coup. For the study of the coup, they have interviewed around 150 people so far from a wide range of people, including members of different political and income groups,” Tüzünoğlu explains, adding that these witnesses of the 1980 coup all experienced the events from their own perspective. “In order to help people remember the details, the group prepared a newspaper featuring photographs of the important happenings related to the coup between 1978 and 1983. This newspaper is being showcased in the show together with five recordings of the interviewees focusing on how individual experiences are being transmitted to the new generation,” the curator continues.
A video from Özlem Kulak, titled “12 September,” which was previously screened at the Locarno Film Festival, is being screened in Turkey for the first time as part of this exhibition. In it, 13 people, including a baker and the owner of a printing house that publishes Marxist books, recount how they spent the entire day on Sept. 12, 1980.
Another interesting work, by Aslı Çavuşoğlu, is a music album featuring a rap song with lyrics that use words banned by the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) following the coup. “There are around 205 banned words on TRT’s [censor list], and Çavuşoğlu found 191 of them in the archives. MC Fuat sang the song, and it will be on the market soon,” the curator notes.
A video titled “Vakvak Ağacı” (Vakvak Tree) gives a summary of Turkey’s period of modernization, starting from the foundation of the republic until the coup d’état of 1980 in fairy tale form. “The video has references to traditional miniature art and blends reality and fantasy through a bedtime story,” Tüzünoğlu says.
‘September 13’ is a continuation of a previous exhibition with a theme concerning the 1980 military coup, showcased at the Outlet Gallery in 2009 during last year’s İstanbul Biennial. It is also the newest show at the Diyarbakır Art Center, which was founded in 2002 as a civil initiative to showcase the works of artists from Diyarbakır and İstanbul
One of the most provocative works in the exhibition is one by famed contemporary artist Halil Altındere: a copy of Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” with a gun inside of it, which is going to be exhibited in Turkey for the first time. “For leftists, ‘Das Kapital’ is almost like a holy book, and it is sometimes used as a gun. Altındere focuses on this aspect,” Tüzünoğlu adds.
Two works from last year’s coup exhibition at the Outlet Gallery are on display in Diyarbakır, too. A video by Köken Ergun depicts a town in the Netherlands where a tank enters in the early morning hours, while another video by Bengü Karaduman is an attempt to attach meaning to things that happened in her childhood (from her current point of view) through a children’s cartoon. The video is shown in a corner of the gallery in which there is a mirror on the wall across from the screen and so the images in the video are reflected infinitely.
“Köken’s video was shot after getting permission to bring a real tank to the town, and it shows the reaction of the people in the town to this unusual visitor. Karaduman, on the other hand, is a person whose family had to leave the country prior to the coup for political reasons. She did not know the reason why they were living abroad while she was a kid, of course, but in time she learned about the existence of the coup and mixes imagination and reality in her video,” Tüzünoğlu explains.
The show will run until Oct. 13 at the Diyarbakır Art Center. For more information, visit www.diyarbakirsanat.org.
13 September 2010, Monday
RUMEYSA KIGER İSTANBUL
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