Exhibiton: 2003 Diyarbakir Sanat Merkezi Dagkapi / Diyarbakir
Diyarbakır Sanat Merkezi Present the Paintings of the Women Living İn That Region
Diyarbakır Sanat Merkezi Art Gallery presents the project, “From Women”, between 1-30 November 2003. The Project is planned and directed by Su Yücel and realized in collaboration with KA-MER.
Su Yücel, who believes that women can contribute to create new women language by painting their inner worlds, has planned this project by being inspred by the paintings of three women from Muş,who wants to be painting teacher and who have taken lectures from Yücel in Datça in 2002. Yücel has established relations with KA-MER which is an active women organization in Diyarbakır and ina very short time she has gone to Diyarbakir with the needed material lisr and started to study.
The study took ten days ande 90 women between 17-55 years old from Dİyarbakır,Batman ad Kızıltepe participated in this study. The third floor of KA-MER’s building was used for this study by considering creating sincere conditions since beacuse the women would meet with painting for the first time. At the same time, itwas planned to create the same conditions in Batman and Kızıltepe with the teachers coming from that regions. And then additional studies were realized in Batnab and Kızıltepe under the same conditions.
Painter Su Yücel said that : “I’m very happy in these days in which my drean of painting with the women of this region is being realized. We painted hundreds of women’s homes, dreams, children, husbands, goats, pains and excitements all togather. Women reflected all types of feelings and contradictions in their preyers to the images that can take places in the memory.But,at first, they had to feel the painting, paper, brush and paint on their skins.First contact was very important. It was necessary to make contact between what they want to paint and the tools that they use.The new languages first syilables have reached their souls ad minds. Their fear was disappeared.We gradually noticed that painting solved he problem of the insufficient capacity of language in daily use to reflect some themes. Selected colors, tones and drawings couldn’t tell liies.
Su Yücel graduated from Strasbourg Beaux-Arts in 1985 and since then, she participated in some personal and mixed exhibitions in Turkey, Jordan , France Canada, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece and Australia. Besides that, she worked as Art Director in some movies. She was awarded with “ The Best Stage Design” award in 2000 by her design for Genco Erkal’s play, “Can”
The exhibition will be open in Diyarbakır Sanat Merkezi between 1-30 Nowember 2003.
Exhibiton: 2003 Lesbos / Greece - 2007 Izmir
In the villages of Anatolia, where rug and kilim weaving are customery, it is well known that each design represents a different story. These are real life stories that are nourished by emotional love poems including flowers, animals, wedding dances as well as cries of sorrow.
These symbols also represent a secret language among women.
Those were the thoughts on my mind, going to Karaburun, on a cold day of March.
First Encounter (March) Everybody is Drawing
We arrived in Karaburun with Zülal, Güzel and Güliz. First we met Sonia, who gave us some information about the 15 women from Parlak, Sarpincik&Kücükbahce villages.
As I entered their houses, tasted their food, saw their hand made brodery, in short as I got to know the inner world of these women, I was very much impressed and admitted the vast variety of the symbols. On Sunday, we had our first big experiment.
I divided into 15 pieces a big role of cartoon and gave each women a piece.
Than I told them to draw on it, whatever they wanted. Distributed the pastels,coloring pencils and started waiting with excitement; cause they did not know that I intended to put all the pieces together again.
Enrichment(June, 28th,2003)
‘Let us have an Exhibition’
Two months had passed, before I could go back to Karaburun again. This time I knew what I needed to take along with me. Multicolored water colors, specially sparkling ones, different tones of red, pastel chalks, beans, carnations and of course brushes, paper, etc.
This time, women also knew and they were waiting, to draw pictures, to paint.
When we met, it was like a festival, everybody had come dressed up as if going to a celebration. Zehra hanım decided about the location. Offered her garden, which had a pergola covered by grape wines so it was shady and cool.
I think that we were all excited I announced the topic “Draw a moment when you were happy at your village” after this, it was that tremendous creativity period.
The Language of the Colors
At first, I did not notice but later, I realised that the colors of the ‘salvar*’s were limited to three. Some had pink on black, others were red or purple. I enquired and learned that bachelors and virgins wore pink, those wearing red were old enough. There is also a saying for those women who are getting old ‘her red is burnt out’ This means that it is time to pass to purple and leave the red ‘salvar’ But, women themselves decide when to maket his change, like in many other issues. I wondered if there were any association of colors with age and status of women in the old ages. Then, I learned from experts that in the Greek mythology pink was symbol of purity and virginity of Artemis, while red was associated with blood, fertility, feminity and sensuality of Afrodit, purple on the other hand was the passage to earth, going to Hekate, menopause, ending of fertility, the ending of red fire, going towards the end of the journey.
Another one of these symbols was the ‘bridal broom’
Bridal broom: In Karaburun, it is a tradition for the bride to take along a broom dressed like a bride, when she is leaving her parents house and getting married.
Thus the women by taking the broom that she used to sweap her parent’s house to her new home, is bringing something fundamental for new house with some nostalgia at the same time. While the bridal dressing gives it the joy of starting a new life. This was the explanation I got in Karaburun.
The expert, on the other hand, gave this broom of a triangular designed bottom and a cylinderic stick, quite a different meaning. The triangle was associated with vagina, fertility and motherhood while the stick was thought to resemble the penis. Thus the brom has both the woman and the men in itself, as it is anatomically in the female body. So we can also consider it as a symbol of the self sufficiency of the women.
From Su Yucel’s notebook;
Let us listen to their own voices if you wish. Following is a sample from the recordings of the woman’s talk, while they were painting. The saddest tractor accident of Sarpincik
A sad song fort he son going away from his military service.
Let my son go and come back happily, flying as a bird.
A crying mother because they have closed the primary school of Sarpincik
We were very sorry that our tangerines were not sold and they all droped on earth.
Fighting at a wedding.
Our grapes have dropped, hurry to pick them up!
Flood ruined the roads, my car got stuck on the way
The Exhibition
While preparing this exhibition I used the colors pink, red and purple on black to reflect the different moods of feeling, which actally symbolized different states of women and by using ‘basma’ the material, women use for their dresses during their daily life, I aimed to integrate the pictures on a common foundation. Thus, for he first time the women turned to be the subject instead of the object and during this journey they had the experience of defining themselves and standing by it.
The women who had drawn themselves in their paintings could now, watch their creation, thus, they were looking at themselves from far so, each woman was seeing herself as an outsider, this was a remarkable experience.
It was as is the archaic people of hundred thousand years ago had returned to life as Ayse, Zehra, Aliye, of Sarpincik, Parlak, Kucukbahce villages in Karaburun of today. My aim was to show that the mutual, universal subconcious was not limited by time, class, status, language or geography and that the colors had a common language of their own that have survived through the ages.
*salvar:baggy trousers
Painter Su YUCEL
(The manager of the workshop to motivate creativity in Women)
2003 Octobre - Lesbos ,Greece
2007 Mars – İzmir
Exhibiton: 2007 Sulukule / Istanbul - 2008 Beyoglu / Istanbul
IMPOSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE WITHOUT MIXING WITH THEM…
We heard Sulukule district was going to be torn down.
In June 2006, I joined a group from the “Accessible Habitat Association” for a visit to Sulukule, taking along my paints, brushes and paper. What was important from me, was to hear the ”sounds of Sulukule” which was to be destroyed before long.
When we arrived early in the morning, the whole neighborhood was still asleep. Then it began to wake up with the sounds of cocks crowing and horse cart wheels revolving. We were immediately surrounded by women, children, and young men. ..
They began to talk, all at the same time, about the local government’s decision of demolishing of Sulukule. They were so much carried away by their thoughts that I began to feel discouraged about bringing in the subject of “working on painting together”. I did not know them, nor did they know me. We were to share a very unfamiliar work.
I wanted them to depict their daily lives. I knew oral literature was a strong tradition among the Romany. The only source they depended on for keeping their future alive was the memory of the elderly people. I wanted to record the life of Sulukule in pictures.
What I was able do was simply to make pictures and what they possessed, was a great respect for art. During our work, they were so absorbed in what they were doing that they said: “Words vanish but writing and pictures stay”.
I have been watching the Romany people ever since I was a kid. The first time I was aware of their existence I was only seven. We lived in Kanlıca Bay. They traveled from north, Beykoz, Akbaba district, in search of warmer places to spend the winter, in groups of parents, kids and dogs in horse driven carts. My earliest observations captured this image. How strange it was, to get the sensation of cheer and melancholy both at the same time...
Later, I have always kept tracing their carts. I would see the Romany in Üsküdar and Beşiktaş, selling flowers. Who else, could have made those spots in the city more attractive than they did? This quiet question kept growing in my mind.
I am painting series of the Romany almost for two years now. Indeed, another quiet question arises, why the Romany?
I think my reason for this, that I believe “painting is built on colour and form.” But there is also an instrument: the brush. For showing their appraisal, artists use a common saying, “here is a solid brush. This idiom depicts the “the ability of transmitting feelings” through the brush. For every moment, painters move from one feeling to another with their brushes..
Now an answer seems to take shape in my mind: I think, the way the Romany live through these storms of feeling is extremely concentrated. Perhaps, I myself started to produce paintings on Romany so that I could live my experience as an artist to the full.
I tried to be with them whenever I met them. I even went to Edirne.
I am happy because I could share this life with them. ..Together with them, I am trying to protect their habitat
Su Yücel
Sulukule project
Reds, blues, yellows, greens,
to cut a long story short
all colors are in front of my eyes.
All excited, all cheerful, all angry, all infatuated
Shouting and screaming, «Me too, me too, put me in your painting too».
My brush, my canvas my hands are trembling.
Red is angry : «Take me », it says.
« Put me in the center of the canvas. Let me be a skirt. »
Geen says, «Get lost.. », to red.
«Everybody in this world knows me,» snaps red,
«I’ll set the place on fire, I am the most attractive one ! However you try, you can only be grass ! » They start a fight.
All of a sudden the silvery sound of a distant, clarinet is heard
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
The tripping nine eight rhythm hushes all the other bickering colors
They pass out with the wind of the silver sound.
Black watches from a distance with an air of pride,
it’s a turkey, can’t stop puffing up.
Looks down upon everything, taking blue on its side
White wants to take a distance and leave
“Let me be a cloud!” Place me in the deepest horizons of the sky!
I don’t want to see anyone.”
Cut it now! Its enough
You have been nagging me.
Shut up now. I gave birth to you!
My canvas became my body, my body became my canvas!
I am the who waits upon these feelings!
I am the one who strives to let them mature, to let them turn into thoughts,
I am the one to let them flow in to the painting
My canvas, my brush and myself, we don’t know what to do in this silence now.
The best perhaps is that
we either all scream together or I stay on my own.