Guest speaker: Yesim Akdeniz. Wednesday 8th December
. Turkish born artist, studied in Dusseldorf, studied a program in Amsterdam, won a prize in 2005. Contemporary Turkish artist.
. Has done exhibitions internationally.
."Radical Selfcare" quite a new series of work.
. Short intro to her work, how she got into what she’s into.
. In general interests in her work has been about belief systems, and the shift of the belief systems. Around products of culture, objects, and artefacts. And most recently over the years her work has been concerned with orientalism, gender, and patriarchal systems.
. Radical Selfcare new series of her work, more distinguished than her former works.
. Originally comes from painting. Saw a shift in herself and her work at the start of 2020.
. The work in this series is textile works, the series itself is called "Radical Selfcare", also titled each of the individual works in the series, self-portrait as an orientalist carpet with a number.
. Wanted to explore the terms of radical selfcare, these terms have been used before in different cultures and contexts.
. Combo of radical and selfcare got curious, wanted to know roots of the term.
. Was inspired by how Audrey Lord used the term, Audrey was a black lesbian feminist activist writer. For her radical selfcare meant an act of resistance in itself. She sees it as the right to protect and preserve your identity so to resist the patriarchy and all the norms you want to oppose.
. Term is about preserving strength to fight against patriarchy and inequality.
. Felt she could directly relate to that.
. Interested in that context. Understanding how an object, an oriental carpet moves from one culture to another, through a belief system.
. Edward Syied? has book, Orientalism. In book describes the dynamics of orientalism, has impact on post-colonial discourse to this day.
. Orientalism started with Western studies, trying to study and investigate the East. This study quickly became a fashion in the 18th century, also at the time became a power structure to define and formulate from the east through generalisation, stereotyping.
. Edward describes orientalism as the knowledge about the part of the world, the East, that is produced by the West, and used for the purpose of control and oppression.
. In the subject finds the internalisation interesting, of the orientalist gaze by the East (comes from there)
. How the East looks at itself through the West finds this orientalist gaze.
. Says its Important to see vocabulary in her work.
. Used a lot of repetition of forms in her work, to evoke the vocabulary.
. Materials: It’s a textile work, uses upholstered materials, like zippers, buttons, belts, chains. They are quite big pieces of work, and are heavy with all the layers.
When researching Yesim I came across her paintings and found myself more drawn to them than her more conceptual textile pieces. This work for example, "Once an Immigrant Always an Immigrant" painted in 2019 appealed to me with its sepia colour palette. The painting as a whole is unconventional in its subject matter ad composition moving more towards surrealism. She stated that she is greatly influenced by the surrealists artists of the likes of Rene Magritte and Dali.