The curator of the show, Emre Zeytinoğlu, explains that he has been thinking about organizing such an exhibition for a long time. “Actually, I was planning to showcase a solo show and produce pieces on the subject, because islands, in a geographic sense, are a big part of my life. The places I have lived and the travels I have undertaken happen to be islands most of the time. I don’t know if this is just a coincidence or destiny. But when I was offered to curate an exhibition at the Siemens Art Gallery I decided to carry my ideas about a solo exhibition into one like this. One thing is certain, though: This show turned out to be one in which other artists contributed, but the shape was determined by my life,” Zeytinoğlu says, adding that a sense of necessity dictated this choice of subject matter. The exhibition features three artists from Cyprus and one from Turkey. “Simge Uygur and Hasan Zeybek are from the Turkish side of the island, while Stella Angelidou is from the Greek side. Ani Setyan, on the other hand, is a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin. He spends part of his life in İstanbul and the rest on Kınalıada. Aside from that, the ‘island’ style of the Armenian diaspora in which he lives directs him to experience an inward life,” the curator explains.
All of the artists are graduates of universities with different artistic inclinations, so the show has an interdisciplinary aspect stemming from the artistic approaches and choices of the artists, Zeytinoğlu emphasizes. “For example, the audience will see an animation from Angelidou together with paintings produced with various materials, a video piece and digital printings from Setyan, an installation from Uygur and Zeybek’s paintings and digital photographs,” he notes.
Islands are summer places in the minds of many people, but there is much more to them, Zeytinoğlu says. “The reason might be the sea that surrounds it. Islands recall the sea and the sea recalls the sun the most. Sea and sun means summer, of course. Through these connections, islands become places where comfort and fun and pleasure meet, a heaven on earth. This is the first image that islands call to mind. Nevertheless, it is also true that this is not the case all the time. Although we have nice dreams about islands, life on an island does not entail a constant heaven. In the depths of that image of heaven, there lie sorrows, disappointments and problems. Pressure and violence may be prevalent on an island that seems like heaven from a distance,” he says, stressing that unfortunately we live in a world in which people cannot overcome their prejudices and habits. “Islanders are affected a lot by this negative situation. Their real life cannot be seen through this vision of heaven most of the time. For an island, the realities of life stand on one side and the visions or dreams pertaining to heaven on the other. What is more, an island is not just limited by the sea. The island finds its real meaning in going inward, into itself. In such a case, there is a big difference between islanders talking about the island and foreigners talking about the same island,” he notes, adding that this show emphasizes the gap between these two perceptions and questions superficial perceptions of life in general.
The curator says he specifically noticed an inclination among the artists within the show to criticize the tired prejudices about the concept of the island. “I saw that all these artists differed from the accustomed approaches to their own geographies. For instance, Turkey sees Cyprus as a strategic point that it has to keep in hand, while for Greece it is part of the enosis policy. This approach means treating those islanders as subjects. This is similar to approaching it as a place to spend the summer with the sea and sun or taking an introverted diaspora as an object of decoration in a state. When I looked at the works in this exhibition, I saw that none of the artists commented on these policies or criticized them, even if they were somewhat affected by them in their work,” he says, adding that they all chose to talk about themselves and explain their regions in relation to themselves as individuals. “In the end we see that neither islands nor islanders are identical. The islands are not alike, and neither are the islanders. But we keep insisting otherwise,” he concludes.
“A summer on the Island” will run through April 14 at the Siemens Art Gallery. For more information visit www.siemenssanat.com.
